1 1 


THE  STORY' OF 
OUR  MERCHANT  MARINE 


•The  Story  of 
Our  Merchant  Marine 


Its  period  of  glory,  its  prolonged  decadence  and  its 
vigorous  revival  as  the  result  of  the  world  war 


BY 

WILLIS  J.  ABBOT 

Author  of  "The  Story  of  Our  Army"  "The  Story  of  Our 
"Soldiers  of  the  Sea"^ etc. 

ILLUSTRATED  BY  RAY  BROWN 


NEW   YORK 

Dodd,  Mead  and  Company 
1919 


Copyright,  1902 

BY  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

As  "American  Merchant  Ships  and  Sailors" 

Copyright,  1919 
BY  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY,  INC. 


Introduction 

No  more  perplexing  nor  more  baffling  problem  con- 
fronts the  people  of  the  United  States  to-day  than  the 
future  of  the  nation's  merchant  marine. 

For  the  first  half  century  of  our  existence  as  a  nation 
the  sea  was  our  greatest  industrial  field.  Seafaring  and 
international  trade  engaged  our  brightest  minds  and  most 
adventurous  spirits.  By  the  middle  of  the  iQth  Century 
we  had  attained  so  preeminent  a  position  on  the  ocean 
that  'we  were  the  most  important  commerce  carrier  in 
the  world.  Then  began  a  process  of  gradual  decline 
until  our  overseas  fleet  had  sunk  to  contemptible  propor- 
tions. In  1913  less  than  ten  per  cent,  of  our  exports  and 
imports  was  carried  in  American  bottoms. 

The  reasons  for  this  decline  are  many,  and,  despite 
the  clamor  of  politicians,  not  all  are  connected  with  leg- 
islation or  with  political  doctrines.  It  is  quite  true  that 
the  United  States  has  always  been  niggardly  in  the  mat- 
ter of  subsidies,  if  not  indeed  absolutely  antagonistic  to 
that  system.  Accordingly  we  have  seen  the  British  mer- 
chant fleet  greatly  increased  by  government  aid,  while 
the  German  merchant  marine,  annihilated  by  the  war, 
may  fairly  be  said  to  have  been  raised  to  second  place 
entirely  by  liberal  subsidies.  During  this  period  the  Con- 
gress of  the  United  States  stubbornly  refused  financial 
aid  of  this  character  to  shipping  corporations  and  our 
fleet,  engaged  in  international  or  overseas  trade  fell  below 
even  those  of  France,  Germany  and  Norway. 

But  the  subsidy  idea  came  in  with  steam  navigation 
and  the  decline  of  our  merchant  fleet  was  apparent  even 

v 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

before  that  era.  In  the  body  of  this  book  the  causes  of 
this  decline  are  fully  discussed,  but  may  be  briefly  stated 
thus: 

Iron   as    a    shipbuilding   material    was    more    economically 
produced  in  England. 

England    was    earlier    in    designing    and    building    marine 
engines. 

The  Confederate  cruisers  destroyed  many  American  ships, 
and  drove  others  to  the  protection  of  foreign  flags. 
England's  wide  distribution  of  colonies  provided  her  with 
superior  coaling  stations  all  over  the  world. 
Lloyd's,    as    a    British    corporation,    discriminated    against 
American  ships  in  registry  and  insurance. 
After   the    Civil   War   the    work   of    developing  our   great 
interior  domain  turned  American  enterprise  away  from  the 
sea. 

American  high  wages  ashore  and  afloat  made  competition 
with  England  in  building  and  manning  ships  difficult. 
The  subsidy  system  has  never  appealed  to  American  law- 
makers. 

Such,  briefly  stated,  are  the  causes  which  brought  the 
American  merchant  marine  to  its  ignoble  state  prior  to 
the  war.  All,  with  the  possible  exception  of  the  concen- 
tration of  American  effort  upon  internal  development, 
are  operative  to-day.  The  problem  now  confronting  the 
American  people  is  how  to  use  the  impetus  furnished  by 
war-time  necessities  to  advance  our  merchant  fleet  to 
preeminence  and  keep  it  there  under  peace  conditions. 

We  have  approaching  completion  an  enormous  fleet  of 
cargo  ships.  When  launched  and  outfitted  they  will  put 
us  first  on  the  ocean.  Can  we  retain  that  position  ?  Can 
we  even  retain  a  creditable  second  place,  conceding  first 
to  Great  Britain  in  view  of  her  insular  citadel  and  far- 
flung  colonial  empire? 

The  questions  are  not  easy  to  answer.  Our  ships 
have  been  built  with  war-time  extravagance.  The  Gov- 
ernment will  have  to  charge  off  hundreds  of  millions  of 
their  cost  to  put  them  on  terms  of  economic  equality 
with  those  of  Great  Britain.  And  are  they  to  be  owned 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

by  the  Government  or  sold  to  private  owners?  If  the 
latter  what  assurance  have  we  that  the  desire  for  imme- 
diate profit  will  not  result  in  their  speedy  resale  to  for- 
eign owners  ?  Perhaps  the  Government  may  merely  lease 
them  to  private  operators.  Perhaps  by  this  means  enter- 
prise may  be  encouraged  without  recourse  to  the  subsidy, 
against  which  American  prejudice  appears  to  be  invet- 
erate. 

Do  we  want  an  American  merchant  marine  manned 
by  foreign  sailors?  Or  do  we  want  one  manned  by 
American  sailors  whose  wages,  by  competition  in  the 
international  labor  market,  have  been  reduced  to  the  level 
at  which  the  Japanese,  Lascars  or  Chinese  coolies  are 
eager  to  work?  Will  the  LaFollette  seaman's  law  so 
fully  protect  the  American  sailor  as  to  force  the  American 
ship  off  the  seas?  Or  can  it,  in  the  midst  of  the  great 
international  reorganization  now  in  progress  at  Paris, 
be  made  the  basis  for  an  international  standard  of  sea- 
man's wages  that  will  ameliorate  the  condition  of  a 
sorely  underpaid  and  badly  used  body  of  men? 

All  these  questions  confront  the  United  States  to-day 
as  a  new  chapter  in  the  history  of  her  achievements  on 
the  high  seas  is  opened.  It  is  not  claimed  that  this  book 
furnishes  the  solutions  of  problems  which  must  for  long 
time  to  come  tax  the  intellectual  resources  of  our  ablest 
statesmen.  But  there  are  gathered  in  this  volume  many 
of  the  facts  which  must  be  known  if  the  nature  of  those 
problems  is  to  be  understood  and  progress  to  be  made 
toward  their  solution. 

No  apology  is  needed  for  the  amount  of  space  de- 
voted to  the  earlier  triumphs  of  the  United  States  upon 
the  sea,  and  the  romantic  history  of  our  sailors'  achieve- 
ments in  every  phase  of  seafaring  life.  He  who  best 
knows  what  our  seamen  have  done  in  the  past  will  most 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

efficiently  join  in  the  endeavor  to  open  for  them  new  and 
corresponding  opportunities  in  the  present. 

Despite  the  clash  of  argument  concerning  the  reasons 
for  the  long  decline  of  American  shipping  in  the  past 
the  author  is  convinced  that  the  chief  and  predominant 
cause  was  the  diversion  of  the  American  mind  to  greater  w 
opportunities  for  constructive  effort,  notably  the  build- 
ing of  railroads,  the  development  of  the  West,  and  the 
reorganization  of  productive  industries  on  a  large  scale. 
To  a  great  extent  these  tasks  have  been  accomplished. 
The  attention  of  our  people  is  again  turned  toward  the 
sea,  and  the  assumption  and  maintenance  of  our  proper 
position  in  international  trade  and  maritime  enterprise. 
We  are  forced  to  put  away  the  parochialism  and  isola- 
tion of  the  past,  and  assume  our  place  in  the  society  of 
nations.  That  place  can  only  be  held  by  sea-power — 
both  naval  and  mercantile — and  as  it  becomes  increas- 
ingly evident  that  the  United  States  needs  that  power  her 
citizens  will  infallibly  supply  it. 

Perhaps  the  situation  could  not  better  be  described 
than  it  was  by  Mr.  Edward  N.  Hurley,  Chairman  of  the 
United  States  Shipping  Board,  in  these  words  in  the 
National  Geographic  Magazine: 

"We  must  make  America  ship-minded.  We  are  so 
little  ship-minded  to-day  that  it  is  chiefly  the  difficulties 
of  operation  which  occupy  the  thoughts  of  those  who  are 
giving  any  thought  whatever  to  our  merchant  marine  of 
to-morrow.  .  .  .  What  people  want  they  usually  get. 
The  American  people  to-day  are  alert  to  the  importance 
of  ships,  and  our  national  business  genius  will  be  equal 
to  working  out  all  the  problems  and  overcoming  all  the 
difficulties." 

W.  J.  A. 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

NEW  ENGLAND  EARLY  TOOK  THE  LEAD  IN  BUILDING  SHIPS 

Frontispiece 

THE  SHALLOP 2 

THE  KETCH 5 

"THE  BROAD  ARROW-MARKED  TIMBER  FIT  FOR  SHIPS"        .  7 

"THE  FARMER-BUILDER  AT  THE  HELM"       ....  8 

SCHOONER-RlGGED  SHARPIE 11 

ONE  OF  THE  FIFTY  WAYS  AT  HOG  ISLAND  SHIPYARDS    facing  12 
"AFTER  A  BRITISH  LIEUTENANT  HAD  PICKED  THE  BEST  OF 

HER  CREW" 18 

EARLY  TYPE  OF  SMACK 21 

ONE  OF  OUR  NEW  SHIPS  TAKING  WATER    .        .        facing  24 

THE  SNOW,  AN  OBSOLETE  TYPE 29 

THE  BUG-EYE 34 

A  "PINK" -      ....  38 

"INSTANTLY  THE  GUN  WAS  RUN  OUT  AND  DISCHARGED"      .  42 

"THE  WATER  FRONT  OF  A  GREAT  SEAPORT  LIKE  NEW  YORK"  55 

AN  ARMED  CUTTER 57 

"THE  LOUD  LAUGH  OFTEN  ROSE  AT  MY  EXPENSE"     .        .  65 

"THE  DREADNAUGHT"  —  NEW  YORK  AND  LIVERPOOL  PACKET  69 

THERE  ARE  BUILDING  IN  AMERICAN  YARDS      .         .     facing  82 
"A  FAVORITE  TRICK  OF  THE  FLEEING  SLAVER  WAS  TO  THROW 

OVER  SLAVES" 95 

DEALERS  WHO  CAME  ON   BOARD  WERE  THEMSELVES   KID- 
NAPPED   facing  98 

"THE  ROPE  WAS  PUT  AROUND  His  NECK"    .        .        .        .103 

"BOUND  THEM  TO  THE  CHAIN  CABLE" 114 

"SENDING  BOAT  AND  MEN  FLYING  INTO  THE  AIR"        .        .  128 

"SUDDENLY  THE  MATE  GAVE  A  HOWL  —  'STARN  ALL  !' "  facing  132 

"RoT  AT  MOULDERING  WHARVES" 140 

"THERE  SHE  BLOWS!" 144 

"TAKING  IT  IN  His  JAWS" 146 

NEARLY  EVERY  MAN  ON  THE  QUARTERDECK  OF  THE  "ARGO" 

WAS  KILLED  OR  WOUNDED 162 

THE  PRISON  SHIP  "JERSEY" 163 

ix 


x  LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

IF  THEY  RETREATED  FARTHER  HE  WOULD   BLOW   Up  THE 

SHIP facing  176 

"I  THINK  SHE  is  A  HEAVY  SHIP" 179 

"STRIVING  TO  REACH  HER  DECKS  AT  EVERY  POINT"  .  .  186 

"THEY  FELL  DOWN  AND  DIED  AS  THEY  WALKED"  .  .  199 

"THE  TREACHEROUS  KAYAK" 203 

THE  SHIP  WAS  CAUGHT  IN  THE  ICE  PACK  .  .  facing  204 

ADRIFT  ON  AN  ICE  FLOE 206 

DE  LONG'S  MEN  DRAGGING  THEIR  BOATS  OVER  THE  ICE  .  210 

THE  WOODEN  BATEAUX  OF  THE  FUR  TRADERS  .  .  facing  230 

"THE  RED-MEN  SET  UPON  THEM  AND  SLEW  THEM  ALL"  .  235 

ONE  OF  THE  FIRST  LAKE  SAILORS 237 

"TWO  BOAT-LOADS  OF  REDCOATS  BOARDED  Us  AND  TOOK  Us 

PRISONERS" 239 

A  VANISHING  TYPE  ON  THE  LAKES 243 

"THE  WHALEBACK" 247 

FLATBOATS  MANNED  WITH  RIFLEMEN  .  .  .  facing  266 
"THE  EVENING  WOULD  PASS  IN  RUDE  AND  HARMLESS 

JOLLITY" 271 

THE  MISSISSIPPI  PILOT 286 

A  DECK  LOAD  OF  COTTON 290 

FEEDING  THE  FURNACE 293 

ON  THE  BANKS 314 

"THE  BOYS  MARKED  THEIR  FISH  BY  CurriNe  OFF  THEIR 

TAILS" 322 

FISHING  FROM  THE  RAIL 328 

TRAWLING  FROM  A  DORY 333 

STRIKES  A  SCHOONER  AND  SHEARS  THROUGH  HER  LIKE  A 

KNIFE facing  334 

REVENUE  CUTTER 335 

MILES  OF  SHIPYARDS  GROWING  WITH  INCREDIBLE  SPEED 

UPON  A  MARSH facing  340 

MINOT'S  LEDGE  LIGHT 341 

WHISTLING  BUOY 350 

LAUNCHING  A  LIFEBOAT  THROUGH  THE  SURF  .  .  .360 

THE  EXCITING  MOMENT  IN  THE  PILOT'S  TRADE  .  facing  362 

ONE  OF  OUR  NEW  MERCHANTMEN  .  .  .  facing  364 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTORY— PLIGHT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  1914 — AN 
ENORMOUS  DEMAND  AND  No  SHIPS  TO  MEET  IT — THE 
EARLIE^JJ^T^Y^^OF^^OUR^  MERCHANT  MARINE — THE 
AMERICAN  SHIP  AND  THE  AMERICAN  SAILOR — NEW  ENG- 
LAND'S LEAD  ON  THE  OCEAN — THE  EARLIEST  AMERICAN 
SHIP-BUILDING — SHIP-BUILDING  IN  THE  FORESTS  AND  ON 
THE  FARM — SOME  EARLY  TYPES — THE  FIRST  SCHOONER 
AND  THE  FIRST  FULL-RIGGED  SHIP — JEALOUSY  AND  ANTAG- 
ONISM OF  ENGLAND — THE  PEST  OF  PRIVATEERING — EN- 
COURAGEMENT FROM  CONGRESS — THJE  GOLDEN  DAYS  OF 
OUR  MERCHANT  MARINE — FIGHTING  CAPTAINS  AND^TRAD- 
ING  CAPTAINS — GROUND  BETWEEN  FRANCE  AND  ENGLAND 
— CHECKED  BY  THE  WARS — SEALING  A°ND  WHALING — INTO 
THE  PACIFIC — How  YANKEE  BOYS  MOUNTED  THE  QUARTER- 
DECK— SOME  STORIES  OF  EARLY  SEAMEN — THE  PACKETS 
AND  THEIR  EXPLOITS 1 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE  TRANSITION  FROM  SAILS  TO  STEAM — THE  CHANGE  IN 
MARINE  ARCHITECTURE — THE  DEPOPULATION  OF  THE  OCEAN 
— CHANGES  IN  THE  SAILOR'S  LOT — FROM  WOOD  TO  STEEL — 
THE  INVENTION  OF  THE  STEAMBOAT — THE  FATE  OF  FITCH 
— FULTON'S  LONG  STRUGGLES — OPPOSITION  OF  THE  SCIEN- 
TISTS—THE "CLERMONT"— THE  STEAMBOAT  ON  THE  OCEAN 
— ON  WESTERN  RIVERS — THE  TRANS- ATLANTIC  PASSAGE 
— THE  "SAVANAH"  MAKES  THE  FIRST  CROSSING — ESTAB- 
LISHMENT OF  BRITISH  LINES — EFFORTS  OF  UNITED  STATES 
SHIP-OWNERS  TO  COMPETE— THE  FAMOUS  COLLINS  LINE— 
THE  CLIPPERS — STEAM  WINS — GOLD  AND  THE  PANAMA 
ROUTE— THE  COST  OF  THE  WAR— JHE  DECLINE  OF  OUR 

SHIPPING 53 

xi 


xii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER  III. 

AN  UGLY  FEATURE  OF  EARLY  SEAFARING— THE  SLAVE  TRADE 
AND  ITS  PROMOTERS — PART  PLAYED  BY  EMINENT  NEW  ENG- 

LANDERS— HOW  THE   TRADE   GREW   UP— THE   PlOUS   AuS- 

PICES  WHICH  SURROUNDED  THE  TRAFFIC — SLAVE- STEALING 
AND  SABBATH-BREAKING — CONDITIONS  OF  THE  TRADE — 
SIZE  OF  THE  VESSELS — How  THE  CAPTIVES  WERE  TREATED 
—MUTINIES,  MAN-STEALING,  AND  MURDER— THE  REVELA- 
TIONS OF  THE  ABOLITION  SOCIETY — EFFORTS  TO  BREAK  UP 
THE  TRADE— AN  AWFUL  RETRIBUTION— ENGLAND  LEADS 
THE  WAY — DIFFICULTY  OF  ENFORCING  THE  LAW — AMER- 
ICA'S SHAME— THE  END  OF  THE  EVIL— THE  LAST  SLAVER  89 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  WHALING  INDUSTRY — ITS  EARLY  DEVELOPMENT  IN  NEW 
ENGLAND — KNOWN  TO  THE  ANCIENTS — SHORE  WHALING 
— BEGINNINGS  OF  THE  DEEP-SEA  FISHERIES — THE  PRIZES 
OP  WHALING— PIETY  OF  ITS  EARLY  PROMOTERS— THE 
RIGHT  WHALE  AND  THE  CACHALOT — A  FLURRY — SOME 
FIGHTING  WHALES— THE  "ESSEX"  AND  THE  "ANN 
ALEXANDER" — TYPES  OF  WHALERS — DECADENCE  OF  THE 
INDUSTRY— EFFECT  OF  OUR  NATIONAL  WARS— THE  EM- 
BARGO— SOME  STORIES  OF  WHALING  LIFE.  .  .  121 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  PRIVATEERS— PART  TAKEN  BY  MERCHANT  SAILORS  IN 
BUILDING  UP  THE  PRIVATEERING  SYSTEM — LAWLESS  STATE 
OF  THE  HIGH  SEAS — METHOD  OF  DISTRIBUTING  PRIVATEER- 
ING PROFITS — PICTURESQUE  FEATURES  OF  THE  CALLING — 
THE  GENTLEMEN  SAILORS— EFFECTS  ON  THE  REVOLU- 
TIONARY ARMY — PERILS  OF  PRIVATEERING — THE  OLD 
JERSEY  PRISON  SHIP— EXTENT  OF  PRIVATEERING— EFFECT 
ON  AMERICAN  MARINE  ARCHITECTURE — SOME  FAMOUS 
PRIVATEERS— THE  "CHASSEUR,"  THE  "PRINCE  DE  NEUF- 
CHATEL,"  THE  "MAM  MOTH*' — THE  SYSTEM  OF  CONVOYS 
AND  THE  "RUNNING  SHIPS"— A  TYPICAL  PRIVATEER'S 


CONTENTS  xiii 

PAGE 

BATTLE — THE  "GENERAL  ARMSTRONG"  AT  FAYAL — SUM- 
MARY OF  THE  WORK  OF  THE  PRIVATEERS .155 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  ARCTIC  TRAGEDY— AMERICAN  SAILORS  IN  THE  FROZEN 
DEEP—THE  SEARCH  FOR  SIR  JOHN*  FRANKLIN— REASONS 
FOR  SEEKING  THE  NORTH  POLE — TESTIMONY  OF  SCIENTISTS 
AND  EXPLORERS— PERTINACITY  OF  POLAR  VOYAGERS— DR. 
KANE  AND  DR.  HAYES — CHARLES  F.  HALL,  JOURNALIST 
AND  EXPLORER— MIRACULOUS  ESCAPE  OF  His  PARTY— THE 
ILL-FATED  "JEANNETTE"  EXPEDITION — SUFFERING  AND 
DEATH  OF  DE  LONG  AND  His  COMPANIONS — A  PITIFUL 
DIARY— THE  GREELY  EXPEDITION— ITS  CAREFUL  PLAN 
AND  COMPLETE  DISASTER— RESCUE  OF  THE  GREELY  SUR- 
VIVORS—PEARY, WELLMAN,  AND  BALDWIN 193 

CHAPTER  VII.  - 

THE  GREAT  LAKES — THEIR  SHARE  IN  THE  MARITIME  TRAFFIC 
OF  THE  UNITED  STATES — THE  EARLIEST  RECORDED  VOYAG- 
ERS— INDIANS  AND  FUR  TRADERS — THE  PIGMY  CANAL 
AT  THE  SAULT  STE.  MARIE — BEGINNING  OF  NAVIGATION 
BY  SAILS— DE  LA  SALLE  AND  THE  "GRIFFIN"— RECOLLEC- 
TIONS OF  EARLY  LAKE  SEAMEN— THE  LAKES  AS  A  HIGH- 
WAY FOR  WESTWARD  EMIGRATION — THE  FIRST  STEAMBOAT 
— EFFECT  OF  MINERAL  DISCOVERIES  ON  LAKE  SUPERIOR — 
THE  ORE-CARRYING  FLEET— THE  WHALES-BACKS— THE 
SEAMEN  OF  THE  LAKES — THE  GREAT  CANAL  AT  THE  "Soo" 
—THE  CHANNEL  TO  BUFFALO— BARRED  OUT  FROM  THE 
OCEAN,  , , ,  , , ,,,,,,,,,, 227 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  MISSISSIPPI  AND  TRIBUTARY  RIVERS— THE  CHANGING 
PHASES  OF  THEIR  SHIPPING— DRIVER  NAVIGATION  AS  A 
NATION-BUILDING  FORCE — THE  VALUE  OF  SMALL  STREAMS 
— WORK  OF  THE  OHIO  COMPANY — AN  EARLY  PROPELLER — 
THE  FRENCH  FIRST  ON  THE  MISSISSIPPI — THE  SPANIARDS 
AT  NEW  ORLEANS— EARLY  METHODS  OF  NAVIGATION— THE 


xiv  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

FLATBOAT,  THE  BROADHORN,  AND  THE  KEELBOAT — LIFE 
OF  THE  RlVERMEN — PlRATES  AND  BUCCANEERS — LAFITTE 
AND  THE  BARATARIANS — THE  GENESIS  OF  THE  STEAMBOATS 
— CAPRICIOUS  RIVER — FLUSH  TIMES  IN  NEW  ORLEANS — 
RAPID  MULTIPLICATION  OF  STEAMBOATS — RECENT  FIGURES 
ON  RIVER  SHIPPING — COMMODORE  WHIPPLE'S  EXPLOIT — 
THE  MEN  WHO  STEERED  THE  STEAMBOATS — THEIR  TECH- 
NICAL EDUCATION — THE  SHIPS  THEY  STEERED — FIRES  AND 
EXPLOSIONS — HEROISM  OF  THE  PILOTS — THE  RACES 261 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  NEW  ENGLAND  FISHERIES — THEIR  PART  IN  EFFECTING 
THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  AMERICA — THEIR  RAPID  DEVELOPMENT 
— WIDE  EXTENT  OF  THE  TRADE — EFFORT  OF  LORD  NORTH 
TO  DESTROY  IT — THE  FISHERMEN  IN  THE  REVOLUTION — 
EFFORTS  TO  ENCOURAGE  THE  INDUSTRY — ITS  PART  IN 
POLITICS  AND  DIPLOMACY — THE  FISHING  BANKS — TYPES 
OF  BOATS — GROWTH  OF  THE  FISHING  COMMUNITIES — 
FARMERS  AND  SAILORS  BY  TURNS — THE  EDUCATION  OF 
THE  FISHERMEN — METHODS  OF  TAKING  MACKEREL — THE 
SEINE  AND  THE  TRAWL — SCANT  PROFITS  OF  THE  INDUSTRY 
—PERILS  OF  THE  BANKS— SOME  PERSONAL  EXPERIENCES— 
THE  FOG  AND  THE  FAST  LINERS — THE  TRIBUTE  OF  HUMAN 
LIFE...  .  303 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE  FUTURE  OF  OUR  MERCHANT  MARINE— How  WAR  STIM- 
ULATED IT — ACTION  OF  CONGRESS — DELAYS  AND  CONTRO- 
VERSIES— WOOD  OR  STEEL? — THE  SHIPBUILDING  PROGRAMME 
— THE  INDUSTRIAL  CITIES — THE  PROBLEM  OF  LABOR — 
TWENTY  THOUSAND  TONS  AFLOAT — INTERNATIONAL  COM- 
PETITION— COST  OF  MAINTAINING  AMERICAN  SHIPS — 
FINDING  AND  TRAINING  THE  SAILORS 337 


The  Story  of  Our  Merchant 
Marine 


CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTORY— PLIGHT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  1914— AN  ENOR- 
MOUS DEMAND  AND  No  SHIPS  TO  MEET  IT— THE  EARLIER 
HISTORY  OF  OUR  MERCHANT  MARINE— THE  AMERICAN  SHIP 
AND  THE  AMERICAN  SAILOR — NEW  ENGLAND'S  LEAD  ON  THE 
OCEAN— THE  EARLIEST  AMERICAN  SHIP-BUILDING—SHIP- 
BUILDING IN  THE  FORESTS  AND  ON  THE  FARM— SOME  EARLY 
TYPES — THE  FIRST  SCHOONER  AND  THE  FIRST  FULL-RIGGED 
SHIP — JEALOUSY  AND  ANTAGONISM  OF- ENGLAND — THE  PEST 
OF  PRIVATEERING — ENCOURAGEMENT  FROM  CONGRESS— THE 
GOLDEN  DAYS  OF  OUR  MERCHANT  MARINE — FIGHTING  CAP- 
TAINS AND  TRADING  CAPTAINS — GROUND  BETWEEN  FRANCE 
AND  ENGLAND — CHECKED  BY  THE  WARS — SEALING  AND  WHAL- 
ING— INTO  THE  PACIFIC — How  YANKEE  BOYS  MOUNTED  THE 
QUARTER-DECK— SOME  STORIES  OF  EARLY  SEAMEN— THE 
PACKETS  AND  THEIR  EXPLOITS. 

WHEN  Robinson  Crusoe  after  long  and  painstaking 
work  had  completed  the  pinnace  by  the  aid  of 
which  he  expected  to  escape  from  his  desolate  island  he 
suddenly  awoke  to  the  fact  that  he  had  built  it  far  from 
the  water  and  had  no  possible  way  of  transporting  it  to 
its  true  element.  DeFoe,  author  of  that  immortal  story 
well  depicts  the  bitter  disappointment  and  self-accusing 
wrath  with  which  the  luckless  castaway  was  over- 
whelmed on  recognizing  the  fatal  effect  of  his  initial 
blunder.  But  he  makes  Crusoe  meet  the  disaster  like 
a  man,  square  his  shoulders  and  set*  about  the  building 
of  another  boat  straitway.  A  great  shock  tests  the  quality 


OF   OUR 

of  a  man  and  of  a  naton.  It  awakens  each  to  a  sense  of 
some  grave  error,  a  recognition  of  some  fatal  defect  by 
which  their  fortune  or  perhaps  their  lives  may  be  endan- 
gered. If  man  or  nation  has  courage,  determination,  the 


THE   SHALLOP 


ability  to  withstand  adversity  and  to  surmount  obstacles 
— in  brief  what  we  call  backbone — such  a  reverse  is  in 
the  end  an  advantage,  for  it  brings  out  all  that  is  bravest 


MERCHANT  MARINE  3 

and  best  in  the  sufferer  and  enables  him  to  mount  on  a 
stairway  of  new  and  wiser  endeavor  to  heights  never 
before  attained. 

When  the  great  war  in  Europe  broke  out  in  1914  the 
United  States  was  in  somewhat  the  position  of  Robinson 
Crusoe  with  his  boat.  It  had  food  and  products  of  every 
sort  which  were  eagerly  desired  by  the  belligerent  nations, 
and  which  our  people  no  less  eagerly  desired  to  sell. 
But  we  had  practically  no  ships  in  which  to  carry  our 
products  to  the  foreign  markets.  Most  happily  for  the 
Allied  cause — which  after  almost  three  years  of  hesita- 
tion we  joined — Great  Britain  had  a  prodigious  mer- 
chant marine  and  an  invincible  navy  with  which  to  pro- 
tect its  cargo  ships.  Had  the  condition  been  reversed, 
had  Germany  possessed  at  sea  the  power  she  wielded  on 
land,  the  result  of  the  war  would  inevitably  have  been 
German  victory.  For  as,  during  our  years  of  neutrality 
our  foodstuffs  and  our  manufactures  were  equally  at 
the  disposal  of  any  belligerent  who  was  able  to  carry 
them  away,  Germany  would  then  have  monopolized  our 
products  and  swiftly  starved  England  into  subjection. 

Without  a  navy  adequate  to  meet  that  of  Great  Britain 
in  combat,  Germany  endeavored  to  accomplish  this  end 
with  her  submarines,  and  in  due  time  the  lawless  pro- 
cedure of  her  U-boats  forced  this  country  into  war. 
Then  indeed  the  nation  awoke  to  the  error  which  had 
allowed  its  merchant  marine  to  languish  through  more 
than  half  a  century  of  government  neglect.  We  could, 
and  did,  create  a  monster  army  in  but  a  few  months' 
time.  Our  munitions  factories  which  had  long  been 
working  day  and  night  for  our  allies  could  readily  divert 
their  activities  to  furnishing  our  own  men  with  cannon 
and  shells,  airplanes  and  tanks,  rifles,  bayonets,  grenades, 
asphyxiating  gas  and  liquid  fire.  As  a  workshop  our 


4  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

efficiency  was  beyond  dispute,  but  we  lacked  a  delivery 
system. 

This  situation  was  the  more  intolerable  because  the 
time  had  been — as  will  be  shown  later  in  this  volume — 
when  the  United  States  had  led  all  nations  on  the  ocean, 
when  the  Stars  and  Stripes  were  to  be  encountered  in  the 
most  out-of-the-way  corners  of  the  world,  and  when 
Great  Britain  herself  was  forced  to  yield  preeminence 
afloat  to  the  sailors  of  the  land  that  had  thrown  off  her 
domination.  But  the  past,  however  glorious,  could  not 
come  to  our  aid  in  the  war-torn  present.  The  clippers  of 
Baltimore  and  of  Salem,  the  prowling  schooners  of 
Maine,  the  bluff-bowed  brigs  of  New  Bedford,  the  liners 
with  towering  masts  and  clouds  of  canvas  that  had  once 
sailed  from  New  York  were  vanished.  We  wanted  to 
supply  a  world  with  meats,  grain  and  other  foodstuffs, 
to  equip  battling  armies  with  great  guns  and  high  ex- 
plosives, to  send  over  in  due  time  an  army  of  our  own 
which  it  seemed  might  number  5,000,000  men  and  to 
keep  each  of  these  supplied  and  equipped.  The  phantom 
ships  of  the  past  were  of  no  service  to  this  end.  We 
needed  huge  fleets  of  cargo  carriers  at  once.  Men  esti- 
mated that  three  tons  to  the  man  in  the  field  was  the 
amount  of  shipping  needed.  One  million  men  was  the 
least  we  thought  of  for  the  first  year's  contribution  of  the 
United  States  to  the  Allied  armies  in  France.  That  made 
3,000,000  tons  of  shipping.  All  the  ocean-going  ships 
under  American  registry  at  the  moment  amounted  to 
2,191,000  tons.  Whence  were  we  to  obtain  the  other 
900,000  tons  ? 

Indeed,  that  is  not  a  fair  statement  of  the  propor- 
tions of  the  problem.  For  we  had  not  only  to  create  a 
gigantic  merchant  fleet,  but  we  had  to  maintain  it  at  its 
fullest  size.  And  when  we  entered  the  war  the  Germans 


MERCHANT   MARINE  5 

were  sinking  ships  at  the  rate  of  500,000  tons  a  month. 
Von  Tirpitz,  and  other  extremists  of  the  German  admir- 
alty, held  forth  to  their  countrymen  the  pleasing  promise 
that,  freed  from  restraints  which  the  neutrality  of  the 
United  States  imposed,  they  could  easily  sink  a  million 
tons  a  month  and  thus  bring  England  to  her  knees.  Had 


THE    KETCH 

they  been  able  to  accomplish  this  enormous  execution, 
that  result  might  fairly  have  followed,  but  the  British 
and  Amercan  navies  found  at  least  a  partial  remedy  for 
the  submarine  before  it  had  brought  famine  very  close 
to  the  people  of  the  British  Isles. 

However,  what  the  United  States  had  to  face  was 


6  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

the  immediate  necessity  of  a  fleet  of  not  less  than  6,000,- 
ooo  tons,  and  the  construction  of  new  vessels  at  such  a 
rate  as  would  not  merely  replace  all  losses  inflicted  by 
submarines,  but  would  at  least  double  the  effective  size 
of  the  fleet  during  the  period  of  the  war,  which,  when 
the  United  States  entered  upon  it,  few  people  thought 
would  be  ended  in  less  than  two  years.  Some  idea  of 
the  proportions  of  this  problem  may  be  derived  from 
the  record  of  ship  construction  and  ship  losses  by  the 
Allies  during  the  period  of  the  war  ending  in  February, 
1917 — the  date  of  the  entrance  of  the  United  States. 
During  that  time  the  shipyards  of  Great  Britain,  France, 
Russia,  Italy  and  Japan  turned  out  2,800,000  tons  of 
new  ships  while  the  submarines  took  away  a  little  more 
than  3,000,000.  And  this  was  the  outcome  of  the  con- 
test between  the  builders  and  the  sinkers  of  ships,  during 
the  period  when  the  latter  were  just  beginning  to  test 
out  the  efficacy  of  their  almost  untried  submarines,  and 
were  still  restrained  to  some  extent  by  the  insistence  of 
the  United  States  and  other  neutrals  that  the  new  weapon 
should  not  be  used  in  a  way  revolting  to  humanity,  and 
in  flagrant  violation  of  recognized  principles  of  inter- 
national law. 

At  the  moment  the  shipping  of  the  world  in  the  hands 
of  nations  either  neutral  or  at  war  with  the  Teutonic 
alliance  amounted  to  25,500,000  tons  in  Atlantic  waters 
and  5,500,000  tons  in  the  Pacific.  Every  hull  was  busy. 
It  was  the  golden  moment  for  ship  owners.  Old  square- 
rigged  wind-jammers  that  had  been  laid  up  for  years, 
and  that  might  never  again  hope  to  breast  a  blue  sea, 
were  outfitted  and  made  fortunes  for  their  owners.  New 
wooden  ships,  hastily  constructed,  paid  for  themselves 
in  their  first  voyage.  Lake  boats  and  harbor  craft  were 
"sent  out  into  the  ocean  and  reaped  golden  rewards. 


MERCHANT   MARINE  ^ 

In  the  list  of  ship-owning  nations  the  United  States 
ranked  second.  But  the  rank  was  illusory.  Great  Britain 
came  first  with  some  14,000,000  tons  of  ocean-going  ves- 
sels available.  The  United  States  followed — a  very  bad 
second — with  2,400,000  tons,  classed  as  "available"  by 


THE  BROAD   ARROW   MARKED   TIMBER   FIT   FOR   SHIPS 


the  Shipping  Board.  But  much  of  our  tonnage  was  of 
coastwise  craft  or  vessels  designed  for  special  service 
like  oil  tanks.  Moreover,  it  is  a  melancholy  fact  that 
our  gross  tonnage  in  1917  was  almost  precisely  what  it 


8 


THE   STORY    OF    OUR 


was  in  1891.  In  that  period  the  gross  tonnage  of  other 
nations  had  more  than  doubled.  For  actual  all-round 
ocean-going  service  the  2,300,000  tons  of  Norway,  the 
1,600,000  tons  of  Holland,  the  1,800,000  tons  of  France 
or  the  1,400,000  tons  of  Italy  were  more  serviceable 
though  ours  stood  higher  in  the  statistical  table. 

The  character  of  our  fleet  was  unfortunate.  What 
we  needed  was  swift  passenger  vessels  to  carry  troops  to 
Europe — of  these  we  had  not  half  a  dozen — and  com- 
modious cargo  ships  for  carrying  supplies.  The  largest 
number  of  our  modern  ships  were  oil  tanks,  admirable 
for  the  purpose  of  carrying  oil  in  tanks  to  all  quarters 
of  the  world,  but  unfit  for  the  passenger,  or  package 


"THE  FARMER-BUILDER  AT  THE  HELM" 

freight  service  which  was  war's  first  need.  Many  were 
fruit  ships  designed  for  navigation  in  the  tropics.  We 
had  only  two  trans-Atlantic  liners  suitable  for  passenger 
use,  and  when  the  war  broke  out  these  had  just  been 


MERCHANT  MARINE  9 

reduced  by  the  companies  operating  them  to  the  grade 
of  second-class  ships.  About  one-eighth  of  our  total 
fleet  had  passenger  accommodations,  and  these  were 
mainly  coasters.  It  is  proper,  however,  to  note  that  be- 
cause of  the  distance  between  our  ports  and  the  nature 
of  the  seas  to  be  navigated  the  American  coaster  is  a 
superior  craft  to  those  of  the  same  class  in  European 
waters.  For  example,  a  ship  sailing  between  New  York 
and  New  Orleans  or  Galveston  undertakes  a  voyage  equal 
in  possible  peril  to  that  of  the  average  trans-Atlantic 
liner,  and  far  exceeding  anything  in  length  which  comes 
in  the  regular  service  of  a  British  or  French  coaster. 
Many  of  these  performed  most  efficient  service  as  trans- 
ports, two  at  least,  the  "Antilles"  and  the  "Covington," 
going  down  before  the  deadly  stroke  of  the  submarines. 

While  but  about  2,400,000  tons  oLour  shipping  in  1917 
was  classed  by  the  Shipping  Board  as  available  for  war 
purposes,  the  gross  tonnage  of  the  United  States  mer- 
chant marine  was  greater  than  this.  We  had  at  that 
time,  of  craft  of  over  100  gross  tons  each,  about  8,600,000 
tons.  Of  these  4,000,000  were  in  the  Atlantic,  Gulf  of 
Mexico  and  Pacific  coast  trade;  about  3,000,000  tons 
on  the  Great  Lakes  and  the  rest  in  international  trade. 
Our  total  tonnage  was  about  one  and  one-half  times 
as  great  as  that  of  Germany,  but  hers  was  practically 
wholly  made  up  of  ships  in  international  trade.  Indeed, 
the  German  ships  interned  in  American  harbors  and 
seized  by  us  upon  our  declaration  of  war  greatly  exceeded 
in  tonnage  and  value  the  entire  United  States  fleet  en- 
gaged in  trans-Atlantic  trade. 

Such  then  stated  in  a  broad  and  general  way  was  the 
condition  of  the  United  States  merchant  marine  when 
the  sudden  shock  of  war  compelled  the  nation  to  take 
steps  for  building  it  up  to  proportions  commensurate 


io  THE  STORY   OF   OUR 

with  the  needs  and  dignity  of  the  nation.  Before  telling 
the  story  of  that  belated  endeavor  to  revive  a  shipping 
that  had  once  led  all  the  world,  let  us  take  up  the  long 
narrative  of  the  beginnings  of  the  United  States  merchant 
marine,  its  rise  to  the  very  first  place  on  the  seas,  and  its 
gradual  sinking  to  the  ignoble  position  it  occupied  when 
a  World  War  galvanized  it  into  life  once  more. 

It  was  but  natural  that  the  people  of  British  origin 
who  settled  our  Atlantic  seaboard  after  the  middle  of  the 
Seventeenth  Century  should  have  turned  to  seafaring 
as  a  pursuit.  They  were  sprung  from  the  greatest  mari- 
time nation  of  the  day.  They  were  separated  from  their 
earlier  homes  and  from  their  immediate  markets  by  the 
ocean.  In  New  England,  at  least,  they  inhabited  a  rugged 
and  sterile  country,  responding  but  reluctantly  to  the 
efforts  of  the  farmer,  and  they  naturally  looked  for  their 
livelihood  to  other  occupations  than  that  of  agriculture. 
In  a  way  the  sea  forced  upon  them  the  evidences  of  the 
wealth  hidden  in  its  capricious  bosom.  The  waters  bor- 
dering their  coasts  abounded  with  fish.  The  rivers  such 
as  the  Connecticut,  the  Thames  and  the  Penobscot  so 
teemed  with  salmon  coming  up  from  the  sea  to  spawn 
that  it  was  the  practice  of  farm  hands  taking  employ- 
ment to  stipulate  that  they  should  not  be  called  upon  to 
eat  salmon  more  than  a  certain  number  of  times  a  week. 
The  rich  fisheries  of  the  Newfoundland  Banks  had  been 
known  in  Europe  even  before  the  establishment  of  the 
American  colonies,  and  one  of  the  causes  of  the  Revolu- 
tion was  the  endeavor  of  Lord  North's  ministry  to  shut 
the  colonists  off  from  fishing  in  these  populous  waters. 
The  whales  frequented  New  England  waters  long  before 
New  Englanders  by  the  thousands  began  prowling  into 
seas  on  the  other  side  of  the  continent  in  pursuit  of  the 
retreating  animals.  TJie  gigantic  carcasses  of  these 


MERCHANT  MARINE 


II 


cetaceans  washed  up  on  New  England  shores  taught  the 
people  the  worth  of  whale-oil  and  whalebone,  and  for 
years  whaling  was  practiced  in  open  boats  within  sight 
of  Nantucket  and  the  shores  of  Cape  Cod. 


SCHOONER -RIGGED  SHARPIE 

Naturally  the  beginnings  of  maritime  enterprise  on 
this  side  of  the  Atlantic  were  small,  and  little  celebrated 
in  history.  The  first  vessel  of  which  we  have  record 
was  the  "Virginia,"  described  at  the  time  as  a  "faire  pin- 
nace of  30  tons,"  built  at  the  mouth  of  the  Kennebec  in 
1608  to  carry  home  a  group  of  discontented  colonists. 
There  followed  a  decked  vessel  of  16  tons,  built  on  the 
Hudson  in  1615,  and  in  1631  'The  Blessing  of  the  Bay," 
a  sloop  of  60  tons  built  on  the  Mystic  River,  by  the 


12  THE  STORY   OF   OUR 

doughty  John  Winthrop,  Governor  of  the  Colony,  and 
begun  on  July  4,  1631 — a  month  and  day  destined  to  find 
fame  in  connection  with  the  launching  of  a  ship  of  state. 
Ten  years  later  a  ship  of  300  tons  burden  was  launched 
at  Salem — a  bigger  craft  than  the  "Mayflower"  which 
had  brought  over  the  colony,  and  bigger  by  far  than  90 
per  cent,  of  the  ships  in  the  British  merchant  marine. 
So  with  that  year  the  business  of  ship  building  may  be 
looked  upon  as  definitely  established  among  the  leading 
New  England  industries. 

By  that  time  most  European  ports  were  beginning 
to  show  the  clearances  of  American  vessels.  This  was 
but  natural.  Nowhere  in  the  world  were  there  such 
forests  of  great  towering  pines  and  sturdy  oaks  close  to 
the  water's  edge,  so  that  the  work  of  making  a  clearing 
for  a  shipyard  furnished  much  of  the  timber  for  the 
first  ships.  The  tall,  straight  pines  of  Maine  and  New 
Hampshire  furnished  masts  for  the  ships  of  Drake  and 
Rodney,  and  not  infrequently  a  colony,  in  the  days  of 
loyalty  to  the  Crown,  would  send  a  present  of  these 
stately  spars  of  from  33  to  35  inches  in  diameter.  The 
navigable  rivers,  extending  into  the  trackless  forests, 
enabled  the  shipbuilders  to  do  their  work  where  the 
timber  was  standing.  Farmers  during  the  winter  built 
small  craft  from  the  forests  on  their  own  lands,  and 
many  of  the  farmers'  boys  took  the  ship  built  in  their 
dooryard,  loaded  her  with  their  own  and  their  neighbor's 
produce  and  took  her  to  the  markets  of  Portsmouth,  Bos- 
ton or  New  York. 

The  types  of  craft  making  up  our  early  fleets  have 
largely  disappeared.  Even  the  names  need  explanation 
to-day.  The  ketch  was  a  two-master,  sometimes  with 
lanteen  sails,  but  more  commonly  with  a  square  rigged 
foremast,  and  a  mainmast  carrying  a  fore-and-aft  sail 


OXE   OF    THE    FIFTY    WAYS    AT    HOG    ISLAND    SHIPYARDS 


MERCHANT   MARINE  13 

topped  with  a  square  topsail.  The  snow  was  practically 
a  brig,  but  with  a  fore-and-aft  sail  on  the  mainmast.  A 
pink  was  a  schooner  without  bowsprit  or  jib.  The  shal- 
lop, the  bug-eye,  the  sharpie,  the  smack  had  each  definite 
characteristics,  and  the  sharpie  in  Long  Island  Sound 
and  the  bug-eye  in  Chesapeake  Bay  still  persist.  But  of 
all  craft  the  New  England  schooner  had  most  effect  on 
marine  architecture.  Built  first  at  Gloucester  in  1713  it 
derived  its  name  from  the  shout  of  a  bystander  as  the 
hull  slid  lightly  from  the  ways  into  the  water.  "See 
how  she  scoons,"  he  exclaimed,  and  the  proud  owner 
shouted,  "A  schooner  let  her  be." 

By  1642  they  were  building  good-sized  vessels  at 
Boston,  and  the  year  following  was  launched  the  first  full- 
rigged  ship,  the  "Trial,"  which  went  to  Malaga,  and 
brought  back  "wine,  fruit,  oil,  linen  and  wool,  which  was 
a  great  advantage  to  the  country,  and  gave  encouragement 
to  trade."  A  year  earlier  there  set  out  the  modest  fore- 
runner of  our  present  wholesale  spring  pilgrimages  to 
Europe.  A  ship  set  sail  for  London  from  Boston  "with 
many  passengers,  men  of  chief  rank  in  the  country,  and 
great  store  of  beaver.  Their  adventure  was  very  great, 
considering  the  doubtful  estate  of  affairs  of,  England,  but 
many  prayers  of  the  churches  went  with  them  and  fol- 
lowed after  them." 

By  1698  Governor  Bellomont  was  able  to  say  of  Bos- 
ton alone,  "I  believe  there  are  more  good  vessels  belong- 
ing to  the  town  of  Boston  than  to  all  Scotland  and  Ire- 
land." Thereafter  the  business  rapidly  developed,  until 
in  a  map  of  about  1730  there  are  noted  sixteen  shipyards. 
Rope  walks,  too,  sprung  up  to  furnish  rigging,  and  pres- 
ently for  these  Boston  was  a  centre.  Another  industry, 
less  commendable,  grew  up  in  this  as  in  other  shipping 


14  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

centres.  Molasses  was  one  of  the  chief  staples  brought 
from  the  West  Indies,  and  it  came  in  quantities  far  in 
excess  of  any  possible  demand  from  the  colonial  sweet 
tooth.  But  it  could  be  made  into  rum,  and  in  those  days 
rum  was  held  an  innocent  beverage,  dispensed  like  water 
at  all  formal  gatherings,  and  used  as  a  matter  of  course 
in  the  harvest  fields,  the  shop,  and  on  the  deck  at  sea. 
Moreover,  it  had  been  found  to  have  a  special  value  as 
currency  on  the  west  coast  of  Africa.  The  negro  savages 
manifested  a  more  than  civilized  taste  for  it,  and  were 
ready  to  sell  their  enemies  or  their  friends,  their  sons, 
fathers,  wives,  or  daughters  into  slavery  in  exchange  for 
the  fiery  fluid.  So  all  New  England  set  to  turning  the 
good  molasses  into  fiery  rum,  and  while  the  slave  trade 
throve  abroad  the  rum  trade  prospered  at  home. 

Of  course  the  rapid  advance  of  the  colonies  in  ship- 
building and  in  maritime  trade  was  not  regarded  in  Eng- 
land with  unqualified  pride.  The  theory  of  that  day — and 
one  not  yet  wholly  abandoned — was  that  a  colony  was  a 
mine,  to  be  worked  for  the  sole  benefit  of  the  mother 
country.  It  was  to  buy  its  goods  in  no  other  market. 
It  was  to  use  the  ships  of  the  home  government  alone  for 
its  trade  across  seas.  It  must  not  presume  to  manufacture 
for  itself  articles  which  merchants  at  home  desired  to 
sell.  England  early  strove  to  impress  such  trade  regula- 
tions upon  the  American  colonies,  and  succeeded  in  em- 
barrassing and  handicapping  them  seriously,  although 
evasions  of  the  navigation  laws  were  notorious,  and  were 
winked  at  by  the  officers  of  the  crown.  The  restrictions 
were  sufficiently  burdensome,  however,  to  make  the  ship- 
owners and  sailors  of  1770  among  those  most  ready  and 
eager  for  the  revolt  against  the  king. 

The  close  of  the  Revolution  found  American  shipping 
in  a  reasonably  prosperous  condition.  It  is  true  that  the 


MERCHANT   MARINE  15 

peaceful  vocation  of  the  seamen  had  been  interrupted,  all 
access  to  British  ports  denied  them,  and  their  voyages  to 
Continental  markets  had  for  six  years  been  attended  by 
the  ever-present  risk  of  capture  and  condemnation.  But 
on  the  other  hand,  the  war  had  opened  the  way  for  priva- 
teering, and  out  of  the  ports  of  Massachusetts,  Rhode 
Island  and  Connecticut  the  privateers  swarmed  like  swal- 
lows from  a  chimney  at  dawn.  To  the  adventurous  and 
not  over-scrupulous  men  who  followed  it,  privateering 
was  a  congenial  pursuit — so  much  so,  unhappily,  that 
when  the  war  ended,  and  a  treaty  robbed  their  calling  of 
its  guise  of  lawfulness,  too  many  of  them  still  continued 
it,  braving  the  penalties  of  piracy  for  the  sake  of  its  gains. 
But  during  the  period  of  the  Revolution  privateering  did 
the  struggling  young  nation  two  services — it  sorely  har- 
assed the  enemy,  and  it  kept  alive  the  seafaring  zeal  and 
skill  of  the  New  Englanders. 

For  a  time  it  seemed  that  not  all  this  zeal  and  skill 
could  replace  the  maritime  interests  where  they  were 
when  the  Revolution  began.  For  most  people  in  the 
colonies  independence  meant  a  broader  scope  of  activity 
— to  the  shipowner  and  sailor  it  meant  new  and  serious 
limitations.  England  was  still  engaged  in  the  effort  to 
monopolize  ocean  traffic  by  the  operation  of  tariffs  and 
navigation  laws.  New  England  having  become  a  foreign 
nation,  her  ships  were  denied  admittance  to  the  ports  of 
the  British  West  Indies,  with  which  for  years  a  flourish- 
ing trade  had  been  conducted.  Lumber,  corn,  fish,  live 
stock,  and  farm  produce  had  been  sent  to  the  islands,  and 
coffee,  sugar,  cotton,  rum,  and  indigo  brought  back.  This 
commerce,  which  had  come  to  equal  £3,500,000  a  year, 
was  shut  off  by  the  British  after  American  independence, 
despite  the  protest  of  Pitt,  who  saw  clearly  that  the  West 
Indians  would  suffer  even  more  than  the  Americans. 


16  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

Time  showed  his  wisdom.  Terrible  sufferings  came  upon 
the  West  Indies  for  lack  of  the  supplies  they  had  been 
accustomed  to  import,  and  between  1780  and  1787  as 
many  as  15,000  slaves  perished  from  starvation. 

Another  cause  held  the  American  merchant  marine 
in  check  for  several  years  succeeding  the  declaration  of 
peace.  If  there  be  one  interest  which  must  have  behind  it 
a  well-organized,  coherent  national  government,  able  to 
protect  it  and  to  enforce  its  rights  in  foreign  lands,  it  is 
the  shipping  interest.  But  American  ships,  after  the 
Treaty  of  Paris,  hailed  from  thirteen  independent  but 
puny  States.  They  had  behind  them  the  shadow  of  a 
confederacy,  but  no  substance.  The  flags  they  carried 
were  not  only  not  respected  in  foreign  countries — they 
were  not  known.  Moreover,  the  States  were  jealous  of 
each  other,  possessing  no  true  community  of  interest,  and 
each  seeking  advantage  at  the  expense  of  its  neighbors. 
They  were  already  beginning  to  adopt  among  themselves 
the  very  tactics  of  harassing  and  crippling  navigation  laws 
which  caused  the  protest  against  Great  Britain.  This 
"Critical  Period  of  American  History,"  as  Professor 
Fiske  calls  it,  was  indeed  a  critical  period  for  American 
shipping. 

The  new  government,  formed  under  the  Constitution, 
was  prompt  to  recognize  the  demands  of  the  shipping 
interests  upon  the  country.  In  the  very  first  measure 
adopted  by  Congress  steps  were  taken  to  encourage  Amer- 
ican shipping  by  differential  duties  levied  on  goods  im- 
ported in  American  and  foreign  vessels.  Moreover,  in 
the  tonnage  duties  imposed  by  Congress  an  advantage  of 
almost  50  per  cent,  was  given  ships  built  in  the  United 
States  and  owned  abroad.  Under  this  stimulus  the  ship- 
ping interests  throve,  despite  hostile  legislation  in  Eng- 
land, and  the  disordered  state  of  the  high  seas,  where 


MERCHANT   MARINE  17 

French  and  British  privateers  were  only  a  little  less  preda- 
tory than  Algierian  corsairs  or  avowed  pirates.  It  was  at 
this  early  day  that  Yankee  skippers  began  making  those 
long  voyages  that  are  hardly  paralleled  to-day  when 
steamships  hold  to  a  single  route  like  a  trolley  car  between 
two  towns.  The  East  Indies  was  a  favorite  trading  point. 
Carrying  a  cargo  suited  to  the  needs  of  perhaps  a  dozen 
different  peoples,  the  vessel  would  put  out  from  Boston 
or  Newport,  put  in  at  Madeira  perhaps,  or  at  some  West 
Indian  port,  dispose  of  part  of  its  cargo,  and  proceed, 
stopping  again  and  again  on  its  way,  and  exchanging  its 
goods  for  money  or  for  articles  thought  to  be  more  salable 
in  the  East  Indies.  Arrived  there,  all  would  be  sold,  and 
a  cargo  of  tea,  coffee,  silks,  spices,  nankeen  cloth,  sugar, 
and  other  products  of  the  country  taken  on.  If  these 
goods  did  not  prove  salable  at  home  the*  ship  would  make 
yet  another  voyage  and  dispose  of  them  at  Hamburg  or 
some  other  Continental  port.  In  1785  a  Baltimore  ship 
showed  the  Stars  and  Stripes  in  the  Canton  River,  China. 
In  1788  the  ship  "Atlantic,"  of  Salem,  visited  Bombay  and 
Calcutta.,  The  effect  of  being  barred  from  British  ports 
was  not,  as  the  British  had  expected,  to  put  an  abrupt  end 
to  American  maritime  enterprise.  It  only  sent  our  hardy 
seamen  on  longer  voyages,  only  brought  our  merchants 
into  touch  with  the  commerce  of  the  most  distant  lands. 
Industry,  like  men,  sometimes  thrives  upon  obstacles. 

For  twenty-five  years  succeeding  the  adoption  of  the 
Constitution  the  maritime  interest — both  shipbuilding  and 
shipowning  —  thrived  more,  perhaps,  than  any  other 
/gainful  industry  pursued  by  the  Americans.  Yet  it  was 
a  time  when  every  imaginable  device  was  employed  to 
keep  our  people  out  of  the  ocean-carrying  trade.  The 
British  regulations,  which  denied  us  access  to  their  ports, 
were  imitated  by  the  French.  The  Napoleonic  wars  came 


i8  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

on,  and  the  belligerents  bombarded  each  other  with  orders 
in  council  and  decrees  that  fell  short  of  their  mark,  but 
did  havoc  among  neutral  merchantmen.  To  the  ordinary 
perils  of  the  deep  the  danger  of  capture — lawful  or  unlaw- 
ful— fay  cruiser  or  privateer,  was  always  to  be  added.  The 
British  were  still  enforcing  their  so-called  "right  of 
search,"  and  many  an  American  ship  was  left  short- 
handed  far  out  at  sea,  after  a  British  naval  lieutenant  had 


'AFTER  A  BRITISH   LIEUTENANT  HAD   PICKED  THE  BEST  OF 
HER   CREW" 

picked  the  best  of  her  crew  on  the  pretense  that  they  were 
British  subjects.  The  superficial  differences  between  an 
American  and  an  Englishman  not  being  as  great  as  those 


MERCHANT   MARINE  19 

between  an  albino  and  a  Congo  black,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  the  boarding  officer  should  occasionally  make  mis- 
takes— particularly  when  his  ship  was  in  need  of  smart, 
active  sailors.  Indeed,  in  those  years  the  civilized — by 
which  at  that  period  was  meant  the  warlike — nations 
were  all  seeking  sailors.  Dutch,  Spanish,  French,  and 
English  were  eager  for  men  to  man  their  fighting  ships ; 
hired  them  when  they  could,  and  stole  them  when  they 
must.  It  was  the  time  of  the  press  gang,  and  the  day 
when  sailors  carried  as  a  regular  part  of  their  kit  an  out- 
fit of  women's  clothing  in  which  to  escape  if  the  word 
were  passed  that  "the  press  is  hot  to-night."  The  United 
States  had  never  to  resort  to  impressment  to  fill  its  navy 
ships'  companies,  a  fact  perhaps  due  chiefly  to  the  small 
size  of  its  navy  in  comparison  with  the  seafaring  popula- 
tion it  had  to  draw  from. 

As  for  the  American  merchant  marine,  it  was  full  of 
British  seamen.  Beyond  doubt  inducements  were  offered 
them  at  every  American  port  to  desert  and  ship  under  the 
Stars  and  Stripes.  In  the  winter  of  1801  every  British 
ship  visiting  New  York  lost  the  greater  part  of  its  crew. 
At  Norfolk  the  entire  crew  of  a  British  merchantman 
deserted  to  an  American  sloop-of-war.  A  lively  trade 
was  done  in  forged  papers  of  American  citizenship,  and 
the  British  naval  officer  who  gave  a  boat-load  of  blue- 
jackets shore  leave  at  New  York  was  liable  to  find  them 
all  Americans  when  their  leave  was  up.  Other  nations 
looked  covetously  upon  our  great  body  of  able-bodied 
seamen,  born  within  sound  of  the  swash  of  the  surf,  nur- 
tured in  the  fisheries,  able  to  build,  to  rig,  or  to  navigate 
a  ship.  They  were  fighting  sailors,  too,  though  serving 
only  in  the  merchant  marine.  In  those  days  the  men  that 
went  down  to  the  sea  in  ships  had  to  be  prepared  to  fight 
other  antagonists  than  Neptune  and  JEolus.  All  the  ships 


20  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

went  armed.  It  is  curious  to  read  in  old  annals  of  the 
number  of  cannon  carried  by  small  merchantmen.  We 
find  the  "Prudent  Sarah"  mounting  10  guns;  the  "Olive 
Branch,"  belied  her  peaceful  name  with  3,  while  the 
pink  "Friendship"  carried  8.  These  years,  too,  were  the 
privateers'  harvest  time.  During  the  Revolution  the  ships 
owned  by  one  Newburyport  merchant  took  23,360  tons  of 
shipping  and  225  men,  the  prizes  with  their  cargoes  sell- 
ing for  $3,950,000.  But  of  the  size  and  the  profits  of  the 
privateering  business  more  will  be  said  in  the  chapter 
devoted  to  that  subject.  It  is  enough  to  note  here  that 
it  made  the  American  merchantman  essentially  a  fighting 
man. 

The  growth  of  American  shipping  during  the  years 
1794-1810  is  almost  incredible  in  face  of  the  obstacles  put 
in  its  path  by  hostile  enactments  and  the  perils  of  the 
war.  In  1794  United  States  ships,  aggregating  438,863 
tons,  breasted  the  waves,  carrying  fish  and  staves  to  the 
West  Indies,  bringing  back  spices,  rum,  cocoa,  and  coffee 
Sometimes  they  went  from  the  W'est  Indies  to  the  Ca- 
naries, and  thence  to  the  west  coast  of  Africa,  where  very 
valuable  and  very  pitiful  cargoes  of  human  beings,  whose 
black  skins  were  thought  to  justify  their  treatment  as 
dumb  beasts  of  burden,  were  shipped.  Again  the  East 
Indies  opened  markets  for  buying  and  selling  both.  But 
England  and  almost  the  whole  of  Western  Europe  were 
closed. 

It  is  not  possible  to  understand  the  situation  in  which 
the  American  sailor  and  shipowner  of  that  day  was  placed, 
without  some  knowledge  of  the  navigation  laws  and  bel- 
ligerent orders  by  which  the  trade  was  vexed.  In  1793 
the  Napoleonic  wars  began,  to  continue  with  slight  inter- 
ruptions until  1815.  France  and  England  were  the  chief 
contestants,  and  between  them  American  shipping  was 


MERCHANT   MARINE 


21 


sorely  harried.  The  French  at  first  seemed  to  extend  to 
the  enterprising  Americans  a  boon  of  incalculable  value 
to  the  maritime  interest,  for  the  National  Convention 
promulgated  a  decree  giving  to  neutral  ships — practically 
to  American  ships,  for  they  were  the  bulk  of  the  neutral 
shipping — the  rights  of  French  ships.  Overjoyed  by  this 


EARLY  TYPE  OF  SMACK 


sudden  opening  of  a  rich  market  long  closed,  the  Yankee 
barks  and  brigs  slipped  out  of  the  New  England  harbors 
in  schools,  while  the  shipyards  rung  with  the  blows  of 
the  hammers,  and  the  forest  resounded  with  the  shouts 
of  the  woodsmen  getting  out  ship-timbers.  The  ocean 


22  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

pathway  to  the  French  West  Indies  was  flecked  with  sails, 
and  the  harbors  of  St.  Kitts,  Guadaloupe,  and  Martinique 
were  crowded.  But  this  bustling  trade  was  short-lived. 
The  argosies  that  set  forth  on  their  peaceful  errand  were 
shattered  by  enemies  more  dreaded  than  wind  or  sea. 
Many  a  ship  reached  the  port  eagerly  sought  only  to  rot 
there;  many  a  merchant  was  beggared,  nor  knew  what 
had  befallen  his  hopeful  venture  until  some  belated  con- 
sular report  told  of  its  condemnation  in  some  French  or 
English  admiralty  court. 

For  England  met  France's  hospitality  with  a  new 
stroke  at  American  interests.  The  trade  was  not  neutral, 
she  said.  France  had  been  forced  to  her  concession  by 
war.  Her  people  were  starving  because  the  vigilance  of 
British  cruisers  had  driven  French  cruisers  from  the  seas, 
and  no  food  could  be  imported.  To  permit  Americans  to 
purvey  food  for  the  French  colonies  would  clearly  be  to 
undo  the  good  work  of  the  British  navy.  Obviously  food 
was  contraband  of  war.  So  all  English  men-of-war  were 
ordered  to  seize  French  goods  on  whatever  ship  found; 
to  confiscate  cargoes  of  wheat,  corn,  or  fish  bound  for 
French  ports  as  contraband,  and  particularly  to  board 
all  American  merchantmen  and  scrutinize  the  crews  for 
English-born  sailors.  The  latter  injunction  was  obeyed 
with  peculiar  zeal,  so  that  the  State  Department  had  evi- 
dence that  at  one  time,  in  1806,  there  were  as  many  as 
6000  American  seamen  serving  unwillingly  in  the  British 
navy. 

France,  meanwhile,  sought  retaliation  upon  England 
at  the  expense  of  the  Americans.  The  United  States,  said 
the  French  government,  is  a  sovereign  nation.  If  it  does 
not  protect  its  vessels  against  unwarrantable  British 
aggressions  it  is  because  the  Americans  are  secretly  in 
league  with  the  British.  France  recognizes  no  difference 


MERCHANT   MARINE  23 

between  its  foes.  So  it  is  ordered  that  any  American 
vessel  which  submitted  to  visitation  and  search  from  an 
English  vessel,  or  paid  dues  in  a  British  port,  ceased  to 
be  neutral,  and  became  subject  to  capture  by  the  French. 
The  effect  of  these  orders  and  decrees  was  simply  that 
any  American  ship  which  fell  in  with  an  English  or 
French  man-of-war  or  privateer,  or  was  forced  by  stress 
of  weather  to  seek  shelter  in  an  English  or  French  port, 
was  lost  to  her  owners.  The  times  were  rude,  evidence 
was  easy  to  manufacture,  captains  were  rapacious,  admir- 
alty judges  were  complaisant,  and  American  commerce 
was  rich  prey.  The  French  West  Indies  fell  an  easy  spoil 
to  the  British,  and  at  Martinique  and  Basseterre  American 
merchantmen  were  caught  in  the  harbor.  Their  crews 
were  impressed,  their  cargoes,  not  yet  discharged,  seized, 
the  vessels  themselves  wantonly  destroyed  or  libelled  as 
prizes.  Nor  were  passengers  exempt  from  the  rigors  of 
search  and  plunder.  The  records  of  the  State  Department 
and  the  rude  newspapers  of  the  time  are  full  of  the  com- 
plaints of  shipowners,  passengers,  and  shipping  mer- 
chants. The  robbery  was  prodigious  in  its  amount,  the 
indignity  put  upon  the  nation  unspeakable.  And  yet  the 
least  complaint  came  from  those  who  suffered  most.  The 
New  England  seaport  towns  were  rilled  with  idle  seamen, 
their  harbors  with  pinks,  schooners,  and  brigs,  lying  lazily 
at  anchor.  The  sailors,  with  the  philosophy  of  men  long 
accustomed  to  submit  themselves  to  nature's  moods  and 
the  vagaries  of  breezes,  cursed  British  and  French  im- 
partially, and  joined  in  the  general  depression  and  idle- 
ness of  the  towns  and  counties  dependent  on  their  activity. 
It  was  about  this  period  (1794)  that  the  American  navy 
was  begun ;  though,  curiously  enough,  its  foundation  was 
not  the  outcome  of  either  British  or  French  depredations, 
but  of  the  piracies  of  the  Algerians.  That  fierce  and 


24  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

predatory  people  had  for  long  years  held  the  Mediter- 
ranean as  a  sort  of  a  private  lake  into  which  no  nation 
might  send  its  ships  without  paying  tribute.  With  singu- 
lar cowardice,  all  the  European  peoples  had  acquiesced 
in  this  conception  save  England  alone.  The  English 
were  feared  by  the  Algerians,  and  an  English  pass — 
which  tradition  says  the  illiterate  Corsairs  identified  by 
measuring  its  enscrolled  border,  instead  of  by  reading — 
protected  any  vessel  carrying  it.  American  ships,  how- 
ever, were  peculiarly  the  prey  of  the  Algerians,  and  many 
an  American  sailor  was  sold  by  them  into  slavery  until 
Decatur  and  Rodgers  in  1805  thrashed  the  piratical  states 
of  North  Africa  into  recognition  of  American  power. 
In  1794,  however,  the  Americans  were  not  eager  for  war, 
and  diplomats  strove  to  arrange  a  treaty  which  would 
protect  American  shipping,  while  Congress  prudently  or- 
dered the  beginning  of  six  frigates,  work  to  be  stopped 
if  peace  should  be  made  with  the  Dey.  The  treaty — not 
one  very  honorable  to  us — was  indeed  made  some  months 
later,  and  the  frigates  long  remained  unfinished. 

It  has  been  the  fashion  of  late  years  to  sneer  at  our 
second  war  with  England  as  unnecessary  and  inconclu- 
sive. But  no  one  who  studies  the  records  of  the  life,  in- 
dustry, and  material  interests  of  our  people  during  the 
years  between  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  and  the 
outbreak  of  that  war  can  fail  to  wonder  that  it  did  not 
come  sooner,  and  that  it  was  not  a  war  with  France  as 
well  as  England.  For  our  people  were  then  essentially 
a  maritime  people.  Their  greatest  single  manufacturing 
industry  was  ship-building.  The  fisheries — whale,  her- 
ring, and  cod — employed  thousands  of  their  men  and  sup- 
ported more  than  one  considerable  town.  The  markets 
for  their  products  lay  beyond  seas,  and  for  their  com- 
merce an  undisputed  right  to  the  peaceful  passage  of  the 


.  ONE   OF  OUR   NKW    SHIPS   TAKING   WATER 


MERCHANT   MARINE  25 

ocean  was  necessary.  Yet  England  and  France,  prose- 
cuting their  own  quarrel,  fairly  ground  American  ship- 
ping as  between  two  millstones.  Our  sailors  were 
pressed,  our  ships  seized,  their  cargoes  stolen,  under  hol- 
low forms  of  law.  The  high  seas  were  treated  as  though 
they  were  the  hunting  preserves  of  these  nations  and 
American  ships  were  quail  and  rabbits.  The  London 
"Naval  Chronicle"  at  that  time,  and  for  long  after,  bore 
at  the  head  of  its  columns  the  boastful  lines : 

"The  sea  and  waves  are  Britain's  broad  domain, 
And  not  a  sail  but  by  permission  spreads." 

And  France,  while  vigorously  denying  the  maxim  in 
so  far  as  it  related  to  British  domination,  was  not  able 
to  see  that  the  ocean  could  be  no  one  nation's  domain,  but 
must  belong  equally  to  all.  It  was  the  time  when  the 
French  were  eloquently  discoursing  of  the  rights  of 
man ;  but  they  did  not  appear  to  regard  the  peaceful  navi- 
gation of  the  ocean  as  one  of  those  rights;  they  were 
preaching  of  the  virtues  of  the  American  republic,  but 
their  rulers  issued  orders  and  decrees  that  nearly  brought 
the  two  governments  to  the  point  of  actual  war.  But 
the  very  fact  that  France  and  England  were  almost 
equally  arrogant  and  aggressive  delayed  the  formal  dec- 
laration of  hostilities.  Within  the  United  States  two 
political  parties — the  Federalists  and  the  Republicans — 
were  struggling  for  mastery.  The  one  defended,  though 
half-heartedly,  the  British,  and  demanded  drastic  action 
against  the  French  spoliators.  The  other  denounced 
British  insolence  and  extolled  our  ancient  allies  and 
brothers  in  republicanism,  the  French.  While  the  poli- 
ticians quarreled  the  British  stole  our  sailors  and  the 
French  stole  our  ships.  In  1798  our,  then  infant,  navy 
gave  bold  resistance  to  the  French  ships,  and  for  a  time 


26  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

a  quasi-war  was  waged  on  the  ocean,  in  which  the  frig- 
ates "Constitution"  and  "Constellation"  laid  the  founda- 
tion for  that  fame  which  they  were  to  finally  achieve  in 
the  war  with  Great  Britain  in  1812.  No  actual  war  with 
France  grew  out  of  her  aggressions.  The  Republicans 
came  into  power  in  the  United  States,  and  by  diplomacy 
averted  an  actual  conflict.  But  the  American  shipping 
interests  suffered  sadly  meanwhile.  The  money  finally 
paid  by  France  as  indemnity  for  her  unwarranted  spolia- 
tions lay  long  undivided  in  the  United  States  Treasury, 
and  the  easy-going  labor  of  urging  and  adjudicating 
French  spoliation  claims  furnished  employment  to  some 
generations  of  politicians  after  the  despoiled  seamen  and 
shipowners  had  gone  down  into  their  graves. 

fin  1800  the  whole  number  of  American  ships  in  for- 
eign and  coasting  trades  and  the  fisheries  had  reached  a 
tonnage  of  972,492.  The  growth  was  constant,  despite  the 
handicap  resulting  from  the  European  wars.  Indeed,  it 
is  probable  that  those  wars  stimulated  American  ship- 
ping more  than  the  restrictive  decrees  growing  out  of 
them  retarded  it,  for  they  at  least  kept  England  and 
France  (with  her  allies)  out  of  the  active  encouragement 
of  maritime  enterprise.  But  the  vessels  of  that  day  were 
mere  pigmies,  and  the  extent  of  the  trade  carried  on  in 
them  would  at  this  time  seem  trifling.  The  gross  ex- 
ports and  imports  of  the  United  States  in  1800  were  about 
$75,000,000  each.  The  vessels  that  carried  them  were 
of  about  250  tons  each,  the  largest  attaining  400  tons. 
An  irregular  traffic  was  carried  on  along  the  coast,  and 
it  was  1801  before  the  first  sloop  was  built  to  ply  regu- 
larly on  the  Hudson  between  New  York  and  Albany. 
She  was  of  100  tons,  and  carried  passengers  only.  Some- 
times the  trip  occupied  a  week,  and  the  owner  of  the 
sloop  established  an  innovation  by  supplying  beds,  pro- 


MERCHANT   MARINE  27 

visions,  and  wines  for  his  passengers.  Between  Boston 
and  New  York  communication  was  still  irregular,  pas- 
sengers waiting  for  cargoes.  But  small  as  this  maritime 
interest  now  seems,  more  money  was  invested  in  it,  and  it 
occupied  more  men,  than  any  other  American  industry, 
save  only  agriculture. 

To  this  period  belong  such  shipowners  as  William 
Gray,  of  Boston,  who  in  1809,  though  he  had  sixty  great 
square-rigged  ships  in  commission,  nevertheless  heartily 
approved  of  the  embargo  with  which  President  Jefferson 
vainly  strove  to  combat  the  outrages  of  France  and  Eng- 
land. Though  the  commerce  of  those  days  was  world- 
wide, its  methods — particularly  on  the  bookkeeping  side 
— were  primitive.  "A  good  captain,"  said  Merchant 
Gray,  "will  sail  with  a  load  of  fish  to  the  West  Indies, 
hang  up  a  stocking  in  the  cabin  on  arriving,  put  therein 
hard  dollars  as  he  sells  fish,  and  pay  out  when  he  buys 
rum,  molasses,  and  sugar,  and  hand  in  the  stocking  on  his 
return  in  full  of  all  accounts."  The  West  Indies,  though 
a  neighboring  market,  were  far  from  monopolizing  the 
attention  of  the  New  England  shipping  merchants.  Gin- 
seng and  cash  were  sent  to  China  for  silks  and  tea,  the 
voyage  each  way,  around  the  tempestuous  Horn,  occupy- 
ing six  months.  In  1785  the  publication  of  the  journals 
of  the  renowned  explorer,  Captain  Cook,  directed  the 
ever-alert  minds  of  the  New  Englanders  to  the  great 
herds  of  seal  and  sea-otters  on  the  northwestern  coast  of 
the  United  States,  and  vessels  were  soon  faring  thither 
in  pursuit  of  fur-bearing  animals,  then  plentiful,  but  now 
bidding  fair  to  become  as  rare  as  the  sperm-whale.  A 
typical  expedition  of  this  sort  was  that  of  the  ship  "Co- 
lumbia," Captain  Kendrick,  and  the  sloop  "Washington," 
Captain  Gray,  which  sailed  September  30,  1787,  bound 
to  the  northwest  coast  and  China.  The  merchant  who 


28  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

saw  his  ships  drop  down  the  bay  bound  on  such  a  voyage 
said  farewell  to  them  for  a  long  time — perhaps  forever. 
Years  must  pass  before  he  could  know  whether  the 
money  he  had  invested,  the  cargo  he  had  adventured,  the 
stout  ships  he  had  dispatched,  were  to  add  to  his  fortune 
or  to  be  at  last  a  total  loss.  Perhaps  for  months  he1 
might  be  going  about  the  wharves  and  coffee-houses, 
esteeming  himself  a  man  of  substance  and  so  held  by 
all  his  neighbors,  while  in  fact  his  all  lay  whitening  in 
the  surf  on  some  far-distant  Pacific  atoll.  So  it  was  al- 
most three  years  before  news  came  back  to  Boston  of 
these  two  ships;  but  then  it  was  glorious,  for  then  the 
"Federalist,"  of  New  York,  came  into  port,  bringing  tid- 
ings that  at  Canton  she  had  met  the  "Columbia/'  and  had 
been  told  of  the  discovery  by  that  vessel  of  the  great 
river  in  Oregon  to  which  her  name  had  been  given.  Thus 
Oregon  and  Washington  were  given  to  the  infant  Union, 
the  latter  perhaps  taking  its  name  from  the  little  sloop 
of  90  tons  which  accompanied  the  "Columbia"  on  her 
voyage.  Six  months  later  the  two  vessels  reached  Boston, 
and  were  greeted  with  salutes  of  cannon  from  the  forts. 
They  were  the  first  American  vessels  to  circumnavigate 
the  globe.  It  is  pleasant  to  note  that  a  voyage  which  was 
so  full  of  advantage  to  the  nation  was  profitable  to  the 
owners.  Thereafter  an  active  trade  was  done  with  mis- 
cellaneous goods  to  the  northwest  Indians,  skins  and 
furs  thence  to  the  Chinese,  and  teas  home.  A  typical  out- 
bound cargo  in  this  trade  was  that  of  the  "Atakualpa"  in 
1800.  The  vessel  was  of  218  tons,  mounted  eight  guns, 
and  was  freighted  with  broadcloth,  flannel,  blankets, 
powder,  muskets,  watches,  tools,  beads,  and  looking- 
glasses.  How  great  were  the  proportions  that  this  trade 
speedily  assumed  may  be  judged  from  the  fact  that  be- 
tween June,  1800,  and  January,  1803,  there  were  im- 


MERCHANT   MARINE 


29 


ported  into  China,  in  American  vessels,  34,357  sea-otter 
skins,  worth  on  an  average  $18  to  $20  each.  Over  a 
million  sealskins  were  imported.  In  this  trade  were  em- 
ployed 80  ships  and  9  brigs  and  schooners,  more  than 
half  of  them  from  Boston. 


THE  8NOW,  AN  OBSOLETE  TYPE 


Indeed,  by  the  last  decade  of  the  eighteenth  century 
Boston  had  become  the  chief  shipping  port  of  the  United 
States.  In  1790  the  arrivals  from  abroad  at  that  port 


30  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

were  60  ships,  7  snows,  159  brigs,  170  schooners,  59 
sloops,  besides  coasters  estimated  to  number  1,220  sail. 
In  the  Independent  Chronicle,  of  October  27,  1791,  ap- 
pears the  item:  "Upwards  of  seventy  sail  of  vessels 
sailed  from  this  port  on  Monday  last,  for  all  parts  of  the 
world."  A  descriptive  sketch,  written  in  1794  and  printed 
in  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  collections,  says 
of  the  appearance  of  the  water  front  at  that  time : 

"There  are  eighty  wharves  and  quays,  chiefly  on  the 
east  side  of  the  town.  Of  these  the  most  distinguished 
is  Boston  pier,  or  the  Long  Wharf,  which  extends  from 
the  bottom  of  State  Street  1,743  feet  into  the  harbor. 
Here  the  principal  navigation  of  the  town  is  carried  on ; 
vessels  of  all  burdens  load  and  unload;  and  the  London 
ships  generally  discharge  their  cargoes.  .  .  .  The 
harbor  of  Boston  is  at  this  date  crowded  with  vessels. 
It  is  reckoned  that  not  less  than  450  sail  of  ships,  brigs, 
schooners,  sloops,  and  small  craft  are  now  in  this  port." 

New  York  and  Baltimore,  in  a  large  way;  Salem, 
Hull,  Portsmouth,  New  London,  New  Bedford,  New 
Haven,  and  a  host  of  smaller  seaports,  in  a  lesser  degree, 
joined  in  this  prosperous  industry.  It  was  the  great  in- 
terest of  the  United  States,  and  so  continued,  though 
with  interruptions,  for  more  than  half  a  century,  influenc- 
ing the  thought,  the  legislation,  and  the  literature  of  our 
people.  When  Daniel  Webster,  himself  a  son  of  a  sea- 
faring State,  sought  to  awaken  his  countrymen  to  the 
peril  into  which  the  nation  was  drifting  through  sec- 
tional dissensions  and  avowed  antagonism  to  the  national 
authority,  he  chose  as  the  opening  metaphor  of  his  reply 
to  Hayne  the  description  of  a  ship,  drifting  rudderless 
and  helpless  on  the  trackless  ocean,  exposed  to  perils 
both  known  and  unknown.  The  orator  knew  his  audi- 
ence. To  all  New  England  the  picture  had  the  vivacity 


MERCHANT   MARINE  31 

of  life.  The  metaphors  of  the  sea  were  on  every  tongue. 
The  story  is  a  familiar  one  of  the  Boston  clergyman  who, 
in  one  of  his  discourses,  described  a  poor,  sinful  soul 
drifting  toward  shipwreck  so  vividly  that  a  sailor  in  the 
audience,  carried  away  by  the  preacher's  imaginative 
skill,  cried  out :  "Let  go  your  best  bower  anchor,  or 
you're  lost."  In  another  church,  which  had  its  pulpit 
set  at  the  side  instead  of  at  the  end,  as  customary,  a  sailor 
remarked  critically :  "I  don't  like  this  craft ;  it  has  its 
rudder  amidships." 

At  this  time,  and,  indeed,  for  perhaps  fifty  years 
thereafter,  the  sea  was  a  favorite  career,  not  only  for 
American  boys  with  their  way  to  make  in  the  world,  but 
for  the  sons  of  wealthy  men  as  well.  That  classic  of 
New  England  seamanship,  "Two  Years  Before  the 
Mast,"  was  not  written  until  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  its  author  went  to  sea,  not  in  search  of 
wealth,  but  of  health.  But  before  the  time  of  Richard 
Henry  Dana,  many  a  young  man  of  good  family  and 
education — a  Harvard  graduate  like  him,  perhaps — bade 
farewell  to  a  home  of  comfort  and  refinement  and  made 
his  berth  in  a  smoky,  fetid  forecastle  to  learn  the  sailor's 
calling.  The  sons  of  the  great  shipping  merchants  al- 
most invariably  made  a  few  voyages — oftenest  as  super- 
cargoes, perhaps,  but  not  infrequently  as  common  sea- 
men. In  time  special  quarters,  midway  between  the  cabin 
and  the  forecastle,  were  provided  for  these  apprentices, 
who  were  known  as  the  "ship's  cousins."  They  did  the 
work  of  the  seamen  before  the  mast,  but  were  regarded 
as  brevet  officers.  There  was  at  that  time  less  to  engage 
the  activities  and  arouse  the  ambitions  of  youth  than 
now,  and  the  sea  offered  the  most  promising  career. 
Moreover,  the  trading  methods  involved,  and  the  rela- 
tions of  the  captain  or  other  officers  to  the  owners,  were 


32  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

such  as  to  spur  ambition  and  promise  profit.  The  mer- 
chant was  then  greatly  dependent  on  his  captain,  who 
must  judge  markets,  buy  and  sell,  and  shape  his  course 
without  direction  from  home.  So  the  custom  arose  of 
giving  the  captain — and  sometimes  other  officers — an 
opportunity  to  carry  goods  of  their  own  in  the  ship,  or 
to  share  the  owner's  adventure.  In  the  whaling  and 
fishery  business  we  shall  see  that  an  almost  pure  com- 
munism prevailed.  These  conditions  attracted  to  the 
maritime  calling  men  of  an  enterprising  and  ambitious 
nature — men  to  whom  the  conditions  to-day  of  mere 
wage  servitude,  fixed  routes,  and  constant  dependence 
upon  the  cabled  or  telegraphed  orders  of  the  owner  would 
be  intolerable.  Profits  were  heavy,  and  the  men  who 
earned  them  were  afforded  opportunities  to  share  them. 
Ships  were  multiplying  fast,  and  no  really  lively  and  alert 
seaman  need  stay  long  in  the  forecastle.  Often  they  be- 
came full-fledged  captains  and  part  owners  at  the  age 
of  twenty-one,  or  even  earlier,  for  boys  went  to  sea  at 
ages  when  the  youngsters  of  equally  prosperous  families 
in  these  days  would  scarcely  have  passed  from  the  care 
of  a  nurse  to  that  of  a  tutor.  Thomas  T.  Forbes,  for 
example,  shipped  before  the  mast  at  the  age  of  thirteen ; 
was  commander  of  the  "Levant"  at  twenty ;  and  was  lost 
in  the  Canton  River  before  he  was  thirty.  He  was  of  a 
family  great  in  the  history  of  New  England  shipping  for 
a  hundred  years.  Nathaniel  Silsbee,  afterwards  United 
States  Senator  from  Massachusetts,  was  master  of  a  ship 
in  the  East  India  trade  before  he  was  twenty-one;  while 
John  P.  Gushing  at  the  age  of  sixteen  was  the  sole — 
and  highly  successful — representative  in  China  of  a  large 
Boston  house.  William  Sturges,  afterwards  the  head  of 
a  great  world-wide  trading  house,  shipped  at  seventeen, 
was  a  captain  and  manager  in  the  China  trade  at  nineteen, 


MERCHANT   MARINE  33 

and  at  twenty-nine  left  the  quarter-deck  with  a  com- 
petence to  establish  his  firm,  which  at  one  time  controlled 
half  the  trade  between  the  United  States  and  China.  A 
score  of  such  successes  might  be  recounted. 

But  the  fee  which  these  Yankee  boys  paid  for  introduc- 
tion into  their  calling  was  a  heavy  one.  Dana's  descrip- 
tion of  life  in  the  forecastle,  written  in  1840,  holds  good 
for  the  conditions  prevailing  for  forty  years  before  and 
forty  after  he  penned  it.  The  greeting  which  his  cap- 
tain gave  to  the  crew  of  the  brig  "Pilgrim"  was  repeated, 
with  little  variation,  on  a  thousand  quarter-decks : 

"Now,  my  men,  we  have  begun  a  long  voyage.  If 
we  get  along  well  together  we  shall  have  a  comfortable 
time;  if  we  don't,  we  shall  hav~  hell  afloat.  All  you 
have  to  do  is  to  obey  your  orders  and  do  your  duty  like 
men — then  you  will  fare  well  enough ;.  if  you  don't,  you 
will  fare  hard  enough,  I  can  tell  you.  If  we  pull  together 
you  will  find  me  a  clever  fellow ;  if  we  don't,  you  will 
find  me  a  bloody  rascal.  That's  all  I've  got  to  say.  Go 
below  the  larboard  watch." 

But  the  note  of  roughness  and  blackguardism  was  not 
always  sounded  on  American  ships.  We  find,  in  looking 
over  old  memoirs,  that  more  than  one  vessel  was  known 
as  a  "religious  ship" — though,  indeed,  the  very  fact  that 
few  were  thus  noted  speaks  volumes  for  the  paganism  of 
the  mass.  But  the  shipowners  of  Puritan  New  England 
not  infrequently  laid  stress  on  the  moral  character  of  the 
men  shipped.  Nathaniel  Ames,  a  Harvard  graduate 
who  shipped  before  the  mast,  records  that  on  his  first 
vessel  men  seeking  berths  even  in  the  forecastle  were 
ordered  to  bring  certificates  of  good  character  from  the 
clergyman  whose  church  they  had  last  attended.  Beyond 
doubt,  however,  this  was  a  most  unusual  requirement. 
More  often  the  majority  of  the  crew  were  rough,  illiterate 


34  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

fellows,  often  enticed  into  shipping  while  under  the  influ- 
ence of  liquor,  and  almost  always  coming  aboard  at  the 
last  moment,  much  the  worse  for  long  debauches.  The 
men  of  a  better  sort  who  occasionally  found  themselves 
unluckily  shipped  with  such  a  crew,  have  left  on  record 
many  curious  stories  of  the  way  in  which  sailors,  utterly 


THE    BUG-E\E 


unable  to  walk  on  shore  or  on  deck  for  intoxication, 
would,  at  the  word  of  command,  spring  into  the  rigging, 
clamber  up  the  shrouds,  shake  out  reefs,  and  perform  the 
most  difficult  duties  aloft. 

Most  of  the  things  which  go  to  make  the  sailor's  lot 


MERCHANT  MARINE  35 

at  least  tolerable  nowadays,  were  at  that  time  unknown. 
A  smoky  lamp  swung  on  gimbals  half-lighted  the  fore- 
castle— an  apartment  which,  in  a  craft  of  scant  400  tons, 
did  not  afford  commodious  quarters  for  a  crew  of  per- 
haps a  score,  with  their  sea  chests  and  bags.  The  condi- 
tion of  the  fetid  hole  at  the  beginning  of  the  voyage,  with 
four  or  five  apprentices  or  green  hands  deathly  sick,  the 
hardened  seamen  puffing  out  clouds  of  tobacco  smoke, 
and  perhaps  all  redolent  of  rum,  was  enough  to  disen- 
chant the  most  ardent  lover  of  the  sea.  The  food,  bad 
enough  in  all  ages  of  seafaring,  was,  in  the  early  days 
of  our  merchant  marine,  too  often  barely  fit  to  keep  life 
in  men's  bodies.  The  unceasing  round  of  salt  pork,  stale 
beef,  "duff,"  "lobscouse,"  doubtful  coffee  sweetened  with 
molasses,  and  water,  stale,  lukewarm,  and  tasting  vilely 
of  the  hogshead  in  which  it  had  been  stored,  required 
sturdy  appetites  to  make  it  even  tolerable.  Even  in  later 
days  Frank  T.  Bullen  was  able  to  write:  "I  have  often 
seen  the  men  break  up  a  couple  of  biscuits  into  a  pot  of 
coffee  for  their  breakfast,  and  after  letting  it  stand  a 
minute  or  two,  skim  off  the  accumulated  scum  of  vermin 
from  the  top — maggots,  weevils,  etc — to  the  extent  of  a 
couple  of  tablespoonsful,  before  they  could  shovel  the 
mess  into  their  craving  stomachs." 

It  may  be  justly  doubted  whether  history  has  ever 
known  a  race  of  men  so  hardy,  so  self-reliant,  so  adapta- 
ble to  the  most  complex  situations,  so  determined  to 
compel  success,  and  so  resigned  in  the  presence  of  in- 
evitable failure,  as  the  early  American  sea  captains.  Their 
lives  were  spent  in  a  ceaseless  conflict  with  the  forces  of 
nature  and  of  men.  They  had  to  deal  with  a  mutinous 
crew  one  day  and  with  a  typhoon  the  next.  If  by  skill- 
ful seamanship  a  piratical  schooner  was  avoided  in  the 
reaches  of  the  Spanish  Main,  the  resources  of  diplomacy 


36  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

would  be  taxed  the  next  day  to  persuade  some  English 
or  French  colonial  governor  not  to  seize  the  cargo  that 
had  escaped  the  pirates.  The  captain  must  be  a  seaman, 
a  sea-soldier,  a  sea-lawyer,  and  a  sea-merchant,  shut  off 
from  his  principals  by  space  which  no  electric  current 
then  annihilated.  He  must  study  markets,  sell  his  cargo 
at  the  most  profitable  point,  buy  what  his  prophetic  vision 
suggested  would  sell  profitably,  and  sell  half  a  dozen 
intermediate  cargoes  before  returning,  and  even  dispose 
of  the  vessel  herself,  if  gain  would  result.  His  experi- 
ence was  almost  as  much  commercial  as  nautical,  and 
many  of  the  shipping  merchants  who  formed  the  aristoc- 
racy of  old  New  York, and  Boston,  mounted  from  the 
forecastle  to  the  cabin,  thence  to  the  counting-room. 

In  a  paper  on  the  maritime  trade  of  Salem,  the  Rev. 
George  Bachelor  tells  of  the  conditions  of  this  early  sea- 
faring, the  sort  of  men  engaged  in  it,  and  the  stimulus  it 
offered  to  all  their  faculties  : 

"After  a  century  of  comparative  quiet,  the  citizens  of  the 
little  town  were  suddenly  dispersed  to  every  part  of  the  Oriental 
world,  and  to  every  nook  of  barbarism  which  had  a  market  and 
a  shore.  The  borders  of  the  commercial  world  received  sudden 
enlargement,  and  the  boundaries  of  the  intellectual  world  under- 
went similar  expansion.  The  reward  of  enterprise  might  be  the 
discovery  of  an  island  in  which  wild  pepper  enough  to  load  a 
ship  might  be  had  almost  for  the  asking,  or  of  forests  where 
precious  gems  had  no  commercial  value,  or  spice  islands  un- 
visited  and  unvexed  by  civilization.  Every  ship-master  and  every 
mariner  returning  on  a  richly  loaded  ship  was  the  custodian  of 
valuable  information.  In  those  days  crews  were  made  up  of 
Salem  boys,  every  one  of  whom  expected  to  become  an  East 
Indian  merchant.  When  a  captain  was  asked  at  Manila  how  he 
contrived  to  find  his  way  in  the  teeth  of  a  northeast  monsoon 
by  mere  dead  reckoning,  he  replied  that  he  had  a  crew  of  twelve 
men,  any  one  of  whom  could  take  and  work  a  lunar  observation 
as  well,  for  all  practical  purposes,  as  Sir  Isaac  Newton  himself. 


MERCHANT   MARINE  37 

"When,  in.  1816,  George  Coggeshall  coasted  the  Mediter- 
•anean  in  the  'Cleopatra's  Barge/  a  magnificent  yacht  of  197  tons, 
vhich  excited  the  wonder  even  of  the  Genoese,  the  black  cook, 
vho  had  once  sailed  with  Bowditch,  was  found  to  be  as  compe- 
ent  to  keep  a  ship's  reckoning  as  any  of  the  officers. 

"Rival  merchants  sometimes  drove  the  work  of  preparation 
light  and  day,  when  virgin  markets  had  favors  to  be  won,  and 
ihips  which  set  out  for  unknown  ports  were  watched  when  they 
lipped  their  cables  and  sailed  away  by  night,  and  dogged  for 
nonths  on  the  high  seas,  in  the  hopes  of  discovering  a  secret, 
veil  kept  by  the  owner  and  crew.  Every  man  on  board  was 
illowed  a  certain  space  for  his  own  little  venture.  People  in 
>ther  pursuits,  not  excepting  the  owner's  minister,  entrusted  their 
.avings  to  the  supercargo,  and  watched  eagerly  the  result  of  their 
idventure.  This  great  mental  activity,  the  profuse  stores  of 
knowledge  brought  by  every  ship's  crew,  and  distributed,  together 
vith  India  shawls,  blue  china,  and  unheard-of  curiosities  from 
•very  savage  shore,  gave  the  community  a  Tare  alertness  of 
ntellect." 

The  spirit  in  which  young  fellows,  scarcely  attained 
o  years  of  maturity,  met  and  overcame  the  dangers  of 
he  deep  is  vividly  depicted  in  Captain  George  Cogges- 
lall's  narrative  of  his  first  face-to- face  encounter  with 
leath.  He  was  in  the  schooner  "Industry,"  off  the  Island 
)f  Teneriffe,  during  a  heavy  gale. 

"Captain  K.  told  me  I  had  better  go  below,  and  that 
ic  would  keep  an  outlook  and  take  a  little  tea  biscuit  on 
leek.  I  had  entered  the  cabin,  when  I  felt  a  terrible 
hock.  I  ran  to  the  companion-way,  when  I  saw  a  ship 
ithwart  our  bows.  At  that  moment  our  foremast  went 
>y  the  board,  carrying  with  it  our  main  topmast.  In  an 
nstant  the  two  vessels  separated,  and  we  were  left  a 
)erfect  wreck.  The  ship  showed  a  light  for  a  few  mo- 
nents  and  then  disappeared,  leaving  us  to  our  fate. 
When  we  came  to  examine  our  situation,  we  found  our 
K>wsprit  gone  close  to  the  knight-heads."  An  investiga- 


38  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

tion  showed  that  the  collision  had  left  the  "Industry" 
in  a  grievous  state,  while  the  gale,  ever  increasing,  blew 
directly  on  shore.  But  the  sailors  fought  sturdily  for 
life.  "To  retard  the  schooner's  drift,  we  kept  the  wreck 
of  the  foremast,  bowsprit,  sails,  spars,  etc.,  fast  by  the 


A  "PINK 


bowsprit  shrouds  and  other  ropes,  so  that  we  drifted  to 
leeward  but  about  two  miles  the  hour.  To  secure  the 
mainmast  was  now  the  first  object.  I  therefore  took 
with  me  one  of  the  best  of  the  crew,  and  carried  the  end 


MERCHANT   MARINE  39 

of  a  rope  cable  with  us  up  to  the  mainmast  head,  and 
clenched  it  round  the  mast,  while  it  was  badly  spring- 
ing. We  then  took  the  cable  to  the  windlass  and  hove 
taut,  and  thus  effectually  secured  the  mast.  .  .  .  We 
were  then  drifting  directly  on  shore,  where  the  cliffs  were 
rocky,  abrupt,  and  almost  perpendicular,  and  were  per- 
haps almost  1,000  feet  high.  At  each  blast  of  lightning 
we  could  see  the  surf  break,  whilst  we  heard  the  awful 
roar  of  the  sea  dashing  and  breaking  against  the  rocks 
and  caverns  of  this  iron-bound  island. 

"When  I  went  below  I  found  the  captain  in  the  act 
of  going  to  bed ;  and  as  near  as  I  can  recollect,  the  follow- 
ing dialogue  took  place : 

"  'Well,  Captain  K.,  what  shall  we  do  next  ?  We  have 
now  about  six  hours  to  pass  before  daylight;  and,  ac- 
cording to  my  calculation,  we  have  only  about  three  hours 
more  drift.  Still,  before  that  time  there  may,  perhaps, 
be  some  favorable  change.' 

"He  replied:  'Mr.  C.,  we  have  done  all  we  can, 
and  can  do  nothing  more.  I  am  resigned  to  my  fate, 
and  think  nothing  can  save  us.' 

"I  replied :  'Perhaps  you  are  right ;  still,  I  am  resolved 
to  struggle  to  the  last.  I  am  too  young  to  die ;  I  am  only 
twenty-one  years  of  age,  and  have  a  widowed  mother, 
three  brothers,  and  a  sister  looking  to  me  for  support 
and  sympathy.  No,  sir,  I  will  struggle  and  persevere  to 
the  last.' 

"'Ah/  said  he,  'what  can  you  do?  Our  boat  will 
not  live  five  minutes  in  the  surf,  and  you  have  no  other 
resource/ 

"  'I  will  take  the  boat/  said  I,  'and  when  she  fills  I 
will  cling  to  a  spar.  I  will  not  die  until  my  strength  is 
exhausted  and  I  can  breathe  no  longer.'  Here  the  con- 
versation ended,  when  the  captain  covered  his  head  with 


40  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

a  blanket.  I  then  wrote  the  substance  of  our  misfortune 
in  the  log-book,  and  also  a  letter  to  my  mother;  rolled 
them  up  in  a  piece  of  tarred  canvas ;  and,  assisted  by  the 
carpenter,  put  the  package  into  a  tight  keg,  thinking 
that  this  might  probably  be  thrown  on  shore,  and  thus 
our  friends  might  perhaps  know  of  our  end." 

Men  who  face  Death  thus  sturdily  are  apt  to  over- 
come him.  The  gale  lessened,  the  ship  was  patched  up, 
the  craven  captain  resumed  command,  and  in  two  weeks' 
time  the  "Industry"  sailed,  sorely  battered,  into  Santa 
Cruz,  to  find  that  she  had  been  given  up  as  lost,  and  her 
officers  and  crew  "were  looked  upon  as  so  many  men 
risen  from  the  dead."  Young  Coggeshall  lived  to  follow 
the  sea  until  gray-haired  and  weather-beaten,  to  die  in 
his  bed  at  last,  and  to  tell  the  story  of  his  eighty  voyages 
in  two  volumes  of  memoirs,  now  growing  very  rare. 
Before  he  was  sixteen  he  had  made  the  voyage  to  Cadiz 
— a  port  now  moldering,  but  which  once  was  one  of  the 
great  portals  for  the  commerce  of  the  world.  In  his 
second  voyage,  while  lying  in  the  harbor  of  Gibraltar,  he 
witnessed  one  of  the  almost  every-day  dangers  to  which 
American  sailors  of  that  time  were  exposed : 

"While  we  were  lying  in  this  port,  one  morning  at  daylight 
we  heard  firing  at  a  distance.  I  took  a  spy-glass,  and  from  aloft 
could  clearly  see  three  gunboats  engaged  with  a  large  ship.  It 
was  a  fine,  clear  morning,  with  scarcely  wind  enough  to  ruffle  the 
glass-like  surface  of  the  water.  During  the  first  hour  or  two  of 
this  engagement  the  gunboats  had  an  immense  advantage;  being 
propelled  both  by  sails  and  oars,  they  were  enabled  to  choose 
their  own  position.  While  the  ship  lay  becalmed  and  unmanage- 
able they  poured  grape  and  canister  shot  into  her  stern  and  bows 
like  hailstones.  At  this  time  the  ship's  crew  could  not  bring  a 
single  gun  to  bear  upon  them,  and  all  they  could  do  was  to  use 
their  small  arms  through  the  ports  and  over  the  rails.  Fortu- 
nately for  the  crew,  the  ship  had  thick  and  high  bulwarks,  which 
protected  them  from  the  fire  of  the  enemy,  so  that  while  they 


MERCHANT'  MARINE  41 

were  hid  and  screened  by  the  boarding  cloths,  they  could  use 
their  small  arms  to  great  advantage.  At  this  stage  of  the  action, 
while  the  captain,  with  his  speaking-trumpet  under  his  left  arm, 
was  endeavoring  to  bring  one  of  his  big  guns  to  bear  on  one  of 
the  gunboats,  a  grapeshot  passed  through  the  port  and  trumpet 
and  entered  his  chest  near  his  shoulder-blade.  The  chief  mate 
carried  him  below  and  laid  him  upon  a  mattress  on  the  cabin 
floor.  For  a  moment  it  seemed  to  dampen  the  ardor  of  the  men ; 
but  it  was  but  for  an  instant.  The  chief  mate  (I  think  his  name 
was  Randall),  a  gallant  young  man  from  Nantucket,  then  took 
the  command,  rallied,  and  encouraged  the  men  to  continue  the 
action  with  renewed  obstinacy  and  vigor.  At  this  time  a  lateen- 
rigged  vessel,  the  largest  of  the  three  privateers,  was  preparing 
to  make  a  desperate  atempt  to  board  the  ship  on  the  larboard 
quarter,  and,  with  nearly  all  his  men  on  the  forecastle  and  long 
bowsprit,  were  ready  to  take  the  final  leap. 

"In  order  to  meet  and  frustrate  the  design  of  the  enemy,  the 
mate  of  the  ship  had  one  of  the  quarter-deck  guns  loaded  with 
grape  and  canister  shot;  he  then  ordered  all  the  ports  on  this 
quarter  to  be  shut,  so  that  the  gun  could  not  be  seen;  and  thus 
were  both  parties  prepared  when  the  privateer  came  boldly  up 
within  a  few  yards  of  the  ship's  lee  quarter.  The  captain,  with 
a  threatening  flourish  of  his  sword,  cried  out  with  a  loud  voice, 
in  broken  English:  'Strike,  you  damned  rascal,  or  I  will  put 
you  all  to  death.'  At  this  moment  a  diminutive-looking  man 
on  board  the  'Louisa/  with  a  musket,  took  deliberate  aim  through 
one  of  the  waist  ports,  and  shot  him  dead.  Instantly  the  gun 
was  run  out  and  discharged  upon  the  foe  with  deadly  effect,  so 
that  the  remaining  few  on  board  the  privateer,  amazed  and  as- 
tounded, were  glad  to  give  up  the  conflict  and  get  off  the  best 
way  they  could. 

"Soon  after  this  a  breeze  sprung  up,  so  that  they  could  work 
their  great  guns  to  some  purpose.  I  never  shall  forget  the  mo- 
ment when  I  saw  the  Star-Spangled  Banner  blow  out  and  wave 
gracefully  in  the  wind,  through  the  smoke.  I  also  at  the  same 
moment  saw  with  pleasure  the  three  gunboats  sailing  and  row- 
ing away  toward  the  land  to  make  their  escape.  When  the  ship 
drew  near  the  port,  all  the  boats  from  the  American  shipping 
voluntarily  went  to  assist  in  bringing  her  to  anchor.  She  proved 
to  be  the  letter-of-marque  ship  'Louisa,'  of  Philadelphia. 


42  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

"I  went  with  our  captain  on  board  of  her,  and  we  there 
learned  that,  with  the  exception  of  the  captain,  not  a  man  had 
been  killed  or  wounded.  The  ship  was  terribly  cut  up  and 
crippled  in  her  sails  and  rigging — lifts  and  braces  shot  away; 
her  stern  was  literally  riddled  like  a  grater,  and  both  large  and 
small  shot,  in  great  numbers,  had  entered  her  hull  and  were 
sticking  to  her  sides.  How  the  officers  and  crew  escaped  unhurt 
is  almost  impossible  to  conceive.  The  poor  captain  was  imme- 
diately taken  on  shore,  but  only  survived  his  wound  a  few 


'INSTANTLY   THE   GUN   WAS   BUN    OUT   AND   DISCHARGED' 


days.  He  had  a  public  funeral,  and  was  followed  to  the  grave 
by  all  the  Americans  in  Gibraltar,  and  very  many  of  the  officers 
of  the  garrison  and  inhabitants  of  the  town. 

"The  ship  had  a  rich  cargo  of  coffee,  sugar,  and  India 
goods  on  board,  and  I  believe  was  bound  for  Leghorn.  The  gun- 
boats belonged  to  Algeciras  and  fought  under  French  colors, 
but  were  probably  manned  by  the  debased  of  all  nations.  I  can 
form  no  idea  how  many  were  killed  or  wounded  on  board  the 
gunboats,  but  from  the  great  number  of  men  on  board,  and  from 


MERCHANT   MARINE  43 

the  length  of  the  action,  there  must  have  been  great  slaughter. 
Neither  can  I  say  positively  how  long  the  engagement  lasted; 
but  I  should  think  at  least  from  three  to  four  hours.  To  the 
chief  mate  too  much  credit  can  not  be  given  for  saving  the  ship 
after  the  captain  was  shot." 

This  action  occurred  in  1800,  and  the  assailants  fought 
under  French  colors,  though  the  United  States  were  at 
peace  with  France.  It  was  fought  within  easy  eyesight 
of  Gibraltar,  and  therefore  in  British  waters;  but  no 
effort  was  made  by  the  British  men-of-war — always  plen- 
tiful there — to  maintain  the  neutrality  of  the  port.  For 
sailors  to  be  robbed  or  murdered,  or  to  fight  with  des- 
peration to  avert  robbery  and  murder,  was  then  only  a 
commonplace  of  the  sea.  Men  from  the  safety  of  the 
adjoining  shore  only  looked  on  in  calm  curiosity,  as 
nowadays  men  look  on  indifferently  to  see  the  powerful 
freebooter  of  the  not  less  troubled  business  sea  rob,  im- 
poverish, and  perhaps  drive  down  to  untimely  death 
others  who  only  ask  to  be  permitted  to  make  their  little 
voyages  unvexed  by  corsairs. 

From  a  little  book  of  memoirs  of  Captain  Richard 
J.  Cleveland,  the  curious  observer  can  learn  what  it  was 
to  belong  to  a  seafaring  family  in  the  golden  days  of 
American  shipping.  His  was  a  Salem  stock.  His 
father,  in  1756,  when  but  sixteen  years  old,  was 
captured  by  a  British  press-gang  in  the  streets  of 
Boston,  and  served  for  years  in  the  British  navy. 
For  this  compulsory  servitude  he  exacted  full  com- 
pensation in  later  years  by  building'  and  commanding 
divers  privateers  to  prey  upon  the  commerce  of  England. 
His  three  sons  all  became  sailors,  taking  to  the  water 
like  young  ducks.  A  characteristic  note  of  the  cosmo- 
politanism of  the  young  New  Englander  of  that  day  is 
sounded  in  the  most  matter-of-fact  fashion  by  young 


44  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

Cleveland  in  a  letter  from  Havre:  "I  can't  help  loving 
home,  though  I  think  a  young  man  ought  to  be  at  home 
in  any  part  of  the  globe."  And  at  home  everywhere  Cap- 
tain Cleveland  certainly  was.  All  his  life  was  spent  in 
wandering  over  the  Seven  Seas,  in  ships  of  every  size, 
from  a  25-ton  cutter  to  a  4OO-ton  Indiaman.  In  those 
days  of  navigation  laws,  blockades,  hostile  cruisers, 
hungry  privateers,  and  bloodthirsty  pirates,  the  smaller 
craft  was  often  the  better,  for  it  was  wiser  to  brave  na- 
ture's moods  in  a  cockle-shell  than  to  attract  men's  notice 
in  a  great  ship.  Captain  Cleveland's  voyages  from 
Havre  to  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  in  a  45-ton  cutter; 
from  Calcutta  to  the  Isle  of  France,  in  a  25-ton  sloop; 
and  Captain  Coggeshall's  voyage  around  Cape  Horn  in 
an  unseaworthy  pilot-boat  are  typical  exploits  of  Yankee 
seamanship.  We  see  the  same  spirit  manifested  occa- 
sionally nowadays  when  some  New  Englander  crosses 
the  ocean  in  a  dory,  or  circumnavigates  the  world  alone 
in  a  3<D-foot  sloop.  But  these  adventures  are  apt  to  end 
ignominiously  in  a  dime  museum. 

A  noted  sailor  in  his  time  was  Captain  Benjamin  I. 
Trask,  master  of  many  ships,  ruler  of  many  deeps,  who 
died  in  harness  in  1871,  and  for  whom  the  flags  on  the 
shipping  in  New  York  Bay  were  set  at  half-mast.  An 
appreciative  writer,  Mr.  George  W.  Sheldon,  in  Harpers 
Magazine,  tells  this  story  to  show  what  manner  of  man 
he  was;  it  was  on  the  ship  "Saratoga,"  from  Havre  to 
New  York,  with  a  crew  among  whom  were  several  re- 
cently liberated  French  convicts : 

"The  first  day  out  the  new  crew  were  very  troublesome, 
owing  in  part,  doubtless,  to  the  absence  of  the  mate,  who  was 
ill  in  bed  and  who  died  after  a  few  hours.  Suddenly  the  second 
mate,  son  of  the  commander,  heard  his  father  call  out,  'Take 
hold  of  the  wheel,'  and  going  forward,  saw  him  holding  a  sailor 


MERCHANT   MARINE  45 

at  arm's  length.  The  mutineer  was  soon  lodged  in  the  cock- 
pit ;  but  all  hands — the  watch  below  and  the  watch  on  deck — 
came  aft  as  if  obeying  a  signal,  with  threatening  faces  and 
clenched  fists.  The  captain,  methodical  and  cool,  ordered  his 
son  to  run  a  line  across  the  deck  between  him  and  the  rebellious 
crew,  and  to  arm  the  steward  and  the  third  mate. 

"'Now  go  forward  and  get  to  work',  he  said  to  the  gang, 
who  immediately  made  a  demonstration  to  break  the  line.  'The 
first  man  who  passes  that  rope,'  added  the  captain,  'I  will  shoot. 
I  am  going  to  call  you  one  by  one;  if  two  come  at  a  time  I  will 
shoot  both.' 

"The  first  to  come  forward  was  a  big  fellow  in  a  red  shirt. 
He  had  hesitated  to  advance  when  called ;  but  the  'I  will  give 
you  one  more  invitation,  sir,'  of  the  captain  furnished  him  with 
the  requisite  resolution.  So  large  were  his  wrists  that  ordinary 
shackles  were  too  small  to  go  around  them,  and  ankle-shackles 
took  their  place.  Escorted  by  the  second  and  third  mates  to  the 
cabin,  he  was  made  to  lie  flat  on  his  stomach,  while  staples  were 
driven  through  the  chains  of  his  handcuffs  to  pin  him  down. 
After  eighteen  of  the  mutineers  had  been  similarly  treated,  the 
captain  himself  withdrew  to  the  cabin  and  lay  on  a  sofa,  telling 
the  second  mate  to  call  him  in  an  hour.  The  next  minute  he  was 
asleep  with  the  stapled  ruffians  all  around  him." 

As  the  ocean  routes  became  more  clearly  defined,  and 
the  limitations  and  character  of  international  trade  more 
systematized,  there  sprung  up  a  new  type  of  American 
ship-master.  The  older  type — and  the  more  romantic — 
was  the  man  who  took  his  ship  from  Boston  or  New 
York,  not  knowing  how  many  ports  he  might  enter  nor 
in  how  many  markets  he  might  have  to  chaffer  before 
his  return.  But  in  time  there  came  to  be  regular  trade 
routes,  over  which  ships  went  and  came  with  almost  the 
regularity  of  the  great  steamships  on  the  Atlantic  ferry 
to-day.  Early  in  the  nineteenth  century  the  movement 
of  both  freight  and  passengers  between  New  York  or 
Boston  on  this  side  and  London  and  Liverpool  on  the 
other  began  to  demand  regular  sailings  on  announced 


46  THE   STORY    OF    QUR 

days,  and  so  the  era  of  the  American  packet-ship  began. 
Then,  too,  the  trade  with  China  grew  to  such  great  pro- 
portions that  some  of  the  finest  fortunes  America  knew — 
in  the  days  before  the  "trust  magnate"  and  the  "multi- 
millionaire"— were  founded  upon  it.  The  clipper-built 
ship,  designed  to  bring  home  the  cargoes  of  tea  in  sea- 
son  to  catch  the  early  market,  was  the  outcome  of  this 
trade.  Adventures  were  still  for  the  old-time  trading 
captain  who  wandered  about  from  port  to  port  with 
miscellaneous  cargoes;  but  the  new  aristocracy  of  the 
sea  trod  the  deck  of  the  packets  and  the  clippers.  Their 
ships  were  built  all  along  the  New  England  coast;  but 
builders  on  the  shores  of  Chesapeake  Bay  soon  began 
to  struggle  for  preeminence  in  this  style  of  naval  archi- 
tecture. Thus,  even  in  the  days  of  wooden  ships,  the 
center  of  the  ship-building  industry  began  to  move  toward 
that  point  where  it  now  seems  definitely  located.  By 
1815  the  name  "Baltimore  clipper"  was  taken  all  over 
the  world  to  signify  the  highest  type  of  merchant  vessel 
that  man's  skill  could  design.  It  was  a  Baltimore  ship 
which  first,  in  1785,  displayed  the  American  flag  in  the 
Canton  River  and  brought  thence  the  first  cargo  of  silks 
and  teas.  Thereafter,  until  the  decline  of  American 
shipping,  the  Baltimore  clippers  led  in  the  Chinese  trade. 
These  clippers  in  model  were  the  outcome  of  forty  years 
of  effort  to  evade  hostile  cruisers,  privateers,  and  pirates 
on  the  lawless  seas.  To  be  swift,  inconspicuous,  quick 
in  maneuvering,  and  to  offer  a  small  target  to  the  guns 
of  the  enemy,  were  the  fundamental  considerations  in- 
volved in  their  design.  Mr.  Henry  Hall,  who,  as  special 
agent  for  the  United  States  census,  made  in  1880  an  in- 
quiry into  the  history  of  ship-building  in  the  United 
States,  says  in  his  report: 


MERCHANT  MARINE  47 

"A  permanent  impression  has  been  made  upon  the  form  and 
rig  of  American  vessels  by  forty  years  of  war  and  interference. 
It  was  during  that  period  that  the  shapes  and  fashions  that  pre- 
vail to-day  were  substantially  attained.  The  old  high  poop- 
decks  and  quarter  galleries  disappeared  with  the  lateen  and  the 
lug-sails  on  brigs,  barks,  and  ships;  the  sharp  stem  was  per- 
manently abandoned;  the  curving  home  of  the  stem  above  the 
house  poles  went  out  of  vogue,  and  vessels  became  longer  in 
proportion  to  beam.  The  round  bottoms  were  much  in  use,  but 
the  tendency  toward  a  straight  rise  of  the  floor  from  the  keel  to 
a  point  half-way  to  the  outer  width  of  the  ship  became  marked 
and  popular.  Hollow  water-lines  fore  and  aft  were  introduced ; 
the  forefoot  of  the  hull  ceased  to  be  cut  away  so  much,  and  the 
swell  of  the  sides  became  less  marked;  the  bows  became  some- 
what sharper  and  were  often  made  flaring  above  the  water,  and 
the  square  sprit-sail  below  the  bowsprit  was  given  up.  Ameri- 
can ship-builders  had  not  yet  learned  to  give  their  vessels  much 
sheer,  however,  and  in  a  majority  of  them  the  sheer  line  was 
almost  straight  from  stem  to  stern ;  nor  '•had  they  learned  to 
divide  the  topsail  into  an  upper  and  lower  sail,  and  American 
vessels  were  distinguished  by  their  short  lower  mast  and  the 
immense  hoist  of  the  topsail.  The  broadest  beam  was  still 
at  two-fifths  the  length  of  the  hull.  Hemp  rigging,  with  broad 
channels  and  immense  tops  to  the  masts,  was  still  retained; 
but  the  general  arrangement  and  cut  of  the  head,  stay,  square, 
and  spanker  sails  at  present  in  fashion  were  reached.  The 
schooner  rig  had  also  become  thoroughly  popularized,  especially 
for  small  vessels  requiring  speed;  and  the  fast  vessels  of  the 
day  were  the  brigs  and  schooners,  which  were  made  long  and 
sharp  on  the  floor  and  low  in  the  water,  with  considerable  rake 
to  the  masts." 

Such  is  the  technical  description  of  the  changes  which 
years  of  peril  and  of  war  wrought  in  the  model  of  the 
American  sailing  ship.  How  the  vessel  herself,  under 
full  sail,  looked  when  seen  through  the  eyes  of  one  who 
was  a  sailor,  with  the  education  of  a  writer  and  the  tem- 
perament of  a  poet,  is  well  told  in  these  lines  from  "Two 
Years  Before  the  Mast" : 


48  ,..      THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

"Notwithstanding  all  that  has  been  said  about  the  beauty 
of  a  ship  under  full  sail,  there  are  very  few  who  have  ever  seen 
a  ship  literally  under  all  her  sail.  A  ship  never  has  all  her  sail 
upon  her  except  when  she  has  a  light,  steady  breeze  very  nearly, 
but  not  quite,  dead  aft,  and  so  regular  that  it  can  be  trusted  and 
is  likely  to  last  for  some  time.  Then,  with  all  her  sails,  light 
and  heavy,  and  studding-sails  on  each  side  alow  and  aloft,  she 
is  the  most  glorious  moving  object  in  the  world.  Such  a  sight 
very  few,  even  some  who  have  been  at  sea  a  good  deal,  have 
ever  beheld;  for  from  the  deck  of  your  own  vessel  you  can  not 
see  her  as  you  would  a  separate  object. 

"One  night,  while  we  were  in  the  tropics,  I  went  out  to  the 
end  of  the  flying  jib-boom  upon  some  duty;  and,  having  finished 
it,  turned  around  and  lay  over  the  boom  for  a  long  time,  admir- 
ing the  beauty  of  the  sight  before  me.  Being  so  far  out  from 
the  deck,  I  could  look  at  the  ship  as  at  a  separate  vessel ;  and 
there  rose  up  from  the  water,  supported  only  by  the  small  black 
hull,  a  pyramid  of  canvas  spreading  far  out  beyond  the  hull  and 
towering  up  almost,  as  it  seemed  in  the  indistinct  night,  into 
the  clouds.  The  sea  was  as  still  as  an  inland  lake;  the  light 
trade-wind  was  gently  and  steadily  breathing  from  astern;  the 
dark-blue  sky  was  studded  with  the  tropical  stars;  there  was  no 
sound  but  the  rippling  of  the  water  under  the  stem ;  and  the  sails 
were  spread  out  wide  and  high — the  two  lower  studding-sails 
stretching  on  either  side  far  beyond  the  deck;  the  topmost  stud- 
ding-sails like  wings  to  the  topsails ;  the  topgallant  studding- 
sails  spreading  fearlessly  out  above  them;  still  higher  the  two 
royal  studding-sails,  looking  like  two  kites  flying  from  the  same 
string;  and  highest  of  all  the  little  sky-sail,  the  apex  of  the 
pyramid,  seeming  actually  to  touch  the  stars  and  to  be  out  of 
reach  of  human  hand.  So  quiet,  too,  was  the  sea,  and  so  steady 
the  breeze,  that  if  these  sails  had  been  sculptured  marble  they 
could  not  have  been  more  motionless — not  a  ripple  on  the  surface 
of  the  canvas ;  not  even  a  quivering  of  the  extreme  edges  of  the 
sail,  so  perfectly  were  they  distended  by  the  breeze.  I  was 
so  lost  in  the  sight  that  I  forgot  the  presence  of  the  man 
who  came  out  with  me,  until  he  said  (for  he,  too,  rough  old 
man-of-war's  man  that  he  was,  had  been  gazing  at  the  show), 
half  to  himself,  still  looking  at  the  marble  sails:  'How  quietly 
they  do  their  work !'  " 


MERCHANT   MARINE  49 

The  building  of  packet  ships  began  in  1814,  when 
some  semblance  of  peace  and  order  appeared  upon  the 
ocean,  and  continued  until  almost  the  time  of  the  Civil 
War,  when  steamships  had  already  begun  to  cut  away 
the  business  of  the  old  packets,  and  the  Confederate 
cruisers  were  not  needed  to  complete  the  work.  But  in 
their  day  these  were  grand  examples  of  marine  archi- 
tecture. The  first  of  the  American  transatlantic  lines  was 
the  Black  Ball  line,  so  called  from  the  black  sphere  on 
the  white  pennant  which  its  ships  displayed.  This  line 
was  founded  in  1815,  by  Isaac  Wright  &  Company,  with 
four  ships  sailing  the  first  of  every  month,  and  making 
the  outward  run  in  about  twenty-three  days,  the  home- 
ward voyage  in  about  forty.  These  records  were  often 
beaten  by  ships  of  this  and  other  lines.  From  thirteen 
to  fifteen  days  to  Liverpool  was  not  an  unknown  record, 
but  was  rare  enough  to  cause  comment. 

It  was  in  this  era  that  the  increase  in  the  size  of  ships 
began — an  increase  which  is  still  going  on  without  any 
sign  of  check.  Before  the  War  of  1812  men  circum- 
'  navigated  the  world  in  vessels  that  would  look  small 
now  carrying  brick  on  the  Tappan  Zee.  The  perform- 
ances of  our  frigates  in  1812  first  called  the  attention  of 
builders  to  the  possibilities  of  the  bigger  ship.  The  early 
packets  were  ships  of  from  400  to  500  tons  each.  As 
business  grew  larger  ones  were  built — stout  ships  of  900 
to  noo  tons,  double-decked,  with  a  poop-deck  aft  and  a 
top-gallant  forecastle  forward.  The  first  three-decker 
was  the  "Guy  Mannering,"  1419  tons,  built  in  1849  by 
William  H.  Webb,  of  New  York,  who  later  founded  the 
college  and  home  for  ship-builders  that  stands  on  the 
wooded  hills  north  of  the  Harlem  River.  In  1841,  Clark 
&  Sewall,  of  Bath,  Me. — an  historic  house — built  the 
"Rappahannock,"  179.6  feet  long,  with  a  tonnage  of 


5o  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

1133  tons.  For  a  time  she  was  thought  to  be  as  much 
of  a  "white  elephant"  as  the  "Great  Eastern"  afterwards 
proved  to  be.  People  flocked  to  study  her  lines  on  the 
ways  and  see  her  launched.  They  said  only  a  Rothschild 
could  afford  to  own  her,  and  indeed  when  she  appeared  in 
the  Mississippi — being  built  for  the  cotton  trade — freights 
to  Liverpool  instantly  fell  off.  But  thereafter  the  size  of 
ships — both  packet  and  clippers — steadily  and  rapidly  in- 
creased. Glancing  down  the  long  table  of  ships  and  their 
records  prepared  for  the  United  States  census,  we  find 
such  notations  as  these. 

Ship  "Flying  Cloud,"  built  1851;  tonnage  1782;  374 
miles  in  one  day ;  from  New  York  to  San  Francisco  in  89 
days  18  hours ;  in  one  day  she  made  433^2  miles,  but  re- 
.     ducing  this  to  exactly  24  hours,1  she  made  4273/2  miles. 
,  Ship  "Comet,"  built   1851;  tonnage   1836;  beautiful 

model  and  good  ship;  made  332  knots  in  24  hours,  and 
1512  knots  in  120  consecutive  hours. 

"Sovereign  of  the  Seas,"  built  1852;  tonnage  2421; 
ran  6,245  miles  in  22  days;  436  miles  in  one  day;  for 
four  days  her  average  was  398  miles. 

"Lightning,"  built  1854;  tonnage  2084;  ran  436  miles 
in  24  hours,  drawing  22  feet ;  from  England  to  Calcutta 
with  troops,  in  87  days,  beating  other  sailing  vessels  by 
from  1 6  to  40  days;  from  Boston  to  Liverpool  in  13  days 
20  hours. 

"James  Baines,"  built  1854,  tonnage  2515;  from  Bos- 
ton to  Liverpool  in  12  days  6  hours. 

Three  of  these  ships  came  from  the  historic  yards  of 
Donald  McKay,  at  New  York,  one  of  the  most  famous  of 
American  ship-builders.  The  figures  show  the  steady  gain 
in  size  and  speed  that  characterized  the  work  of  Ameri- 
can ship-builders  in  those  days.  Then  the  United  States 
was  in  truth  a  maritime  nation.  Every  boy  knew  the 


MERCHANT   MARINE  51 

sizes  and  records  of  the  great  ships,  and  each  magnificent 
clipper  had  its  eager  partisans.  Foreign  trade  was  active. 
Merchants  made  great  profit  on  cargoes  from  China,  and 
speed  was  a  prime  element  in  the  value  of  a  ship.  In  1840 
the  discovery  of  gold  in  California  added  a  new  demand 
for  ocean  shipping ;  the  voyage  around  the  Horn,  already 
common  enough  for  whalemen  and  men  engaged  in 
Asiatic  trade,  was  taken  by  tens  of  thousands  of  adven- 
turers. Then  came  the  news  of  gold  in  Australia,  and 
again  demands  were  clamorous  for  more  swift  American 
ships.  All  nations  of  Europe  were  buyers  at  our  ship- 
yards, and  our  builders  began  seriously  to  consider 
whether  the  supply  of  timber  would  hold  out.  The  yards 
of  Maine  and  Massachusetts  sent  far  afield  for  white  oak 
knees  and  pine  planking.  Southern  forests  were  drawn 
upon,  and  even  the  stately  pines  of  Puget  Sound  were 
felled  to  make  masts  for  a  Yankee  ship. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  TRANSITION  FROM  SAILS  TO  STEAM  —  THE  CHANGE  IN 
MARINE  ARCHITECTURE  —  THE  DEPOPULATION  OF  THE  OCEAN  — 
CHANGES  IN  THE  SAILOR'S  LOT  —  FROM  WOOD  TO  STEEL  —  THE 
INVENTION  OF  THE  STEAMBOAT  —  THE  FATE  OF  FITCH  —  FUL- 
TON'S LONG  STRUGGLES  —  OPPOSITION  OF  THE  SCIENTISTS  —  THE 
"  CLERMONT  "  —  THE  STEAMBOAT  ON  THE  OCEAN  —  ON  WEST- 
ERN RIVERS  —  THE  TRANSATLANTIC  PASSAGE  —  THE  "SAVAN- 
NAH" MAKES  THE  FIRST  CROSSING  —  ESTABLISHMENT  OF 
BRITISH  LINES  —  EFFORTS  OF  UNITED  STATES  SHIP-OWNERS  TO 
COMPETE — THE  FAMOUS  COLLINS  LINE — THE  CLIPPERS — STEAM 
WINS — GOLD  AND  THE  PANAMA  ROUTE — THE  COST  OF  THE 
WAR — THE  DECLINE  OF  OUR  SHIPPING. 

EVEN  as  recently  as  thirty  years  "ago,  the  water 
front  of  a  great  seaport  like  New  York,  viewed 
from  the  harbor,  showed  a  towering  forest  of  tall 
and  tapering  masts,  reaching  high  up  above  the  roofs  of 
the  water-side  buildings,  crossed  with  slender  spars  hung 
with  snowy  canvas,  and  braced  with  a  web  of  taut  cord- 
age. Across  the  street  that  passed  the  foot  of  the  slips, 
reached  out  the  great  bowsprits  or  jibbooms,  springing 
from  fine-drawn  bows  where,  above  a  keen  cut-water,  the 
figurehead — pride  of  the  ship — nestled  in  confident 
strength.  Neptune  with  his  trident,  Venus  rising  from 
the  sea,  admirals  of  every  age  and  nationality,  favorite 
heroes  like  Wellington  and  Andrew  Jackson  were  carved, 
with  varying  skill,  from  stout  oak,  and  set  up  to  guide 
their  vessels  through  tumultuous  seas. 

To-day,  alas,  the  towering  masts,  the  trim  yards,  the 
web  of  cordage,  the  quaint  figureheads,  are  gone  or  going 
fast.  The  docks,  once  so  populous,  seem  deserted — not 


54  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

because  maritime  trade  has  fallen  off,  but  because  one 
steamship  does  the  work  that  twenty  stout  clippers  once 
were  needed  for.  The  clipper  bow  with  figurehead  and 
reaching  jib-boom  are  gone,  for  the  modern  steamship 
has  its  bow  bluff,  its  stem  perpendicular,  the  "City  of 
Rome"  being  the  last  great  steamship  to  adhere  to  the 
old  model.  It  is  not  improbable,  however,  that  in  this 
respect  we  shall  see  a  return  to  old  models,  for  the 
straight  stem — an  American  invention,  by  the  way — is 
held  to  be  more  dangerous  in  case  of  collisions.  Many  of 
the  old-time  sailing  ships  have  been  shorn  of  their  tower- 
ing masts,  robbed  of  their  canvas,  and  made  into  ignoble 
barges  which,  loaded  with  coal,  are  towed  along  by  some 
fuming,  fussing  tugboat — as  Samson  shorn  of  his  locks 
was  made  to  bear  the  burdens  of  the  Philistines.  This 
transformation  from  sail  to  steam  has  robbed  the  ocean 
of  much  of  its  picturesqueness,  and  seafaring  life  of  much 
of  its  charm,  as  well  as  of  many  of  its  dangers. 

The  greater  size  of  vessels  and  their  swifter  trips 
under  steam,  have  had  the  effect  of  depopulating  the 
ocean,  even  in  established  trade  routes.  In  the  old  days  of 
ocean  travel  the  meeting  of  a  ship  at  sea  was  an  event 
long  to  be  remembered.  The  faint  speck  on  the  horizon, 
discernible  only  through  the  captain's  glass,  was  hours 
^n  taking  on  the  form  of  a  ship.  If  a  full-rigged  ship,  no 
handiwork  of  man  could  equal  her  impressiveness  as  she 
bore  down  before  the  wind,  sail  mounting  on  sail  of  bil- 
lowing whiteness,  until  for  the  small  hull  cleaving  the 
waves  so  swiftly,  to  carry  all  seemed  nothing  sort  of  mar- 
velous. Always  there  was  a  hail  and  an  interchange  of 
names  and  ports ;  sometimes  both  vessels  rounded  to  and 
boats  passed  and  repassed.  But  now  the  courtesies  of  the 
sea  have  gone  with  its  picturesqueness.  Great  ocean 
liners  rushing  through  the  deep,  give  each  other  as  little 


MERCHANT   MARINE 


55 


56  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

heed  as  railway  trains  passing  on  parallel  tracks.  A 
twinkle  of  electric  signals,  or  a  fluttering  of  parti-colored 
flags,  and  each  seeks  its  own  horizon — the  incident 
bounded  by  minutes  where  once  it  would  have  taken 
hours. 

It  would  not  be  easy  to  say  whether  the  sailor's  lot 
has  been  lightened  or  not,  by  the  substitution  of  steel  for 
wood,  of  steam  for  sail.  Perhaps  the  best  evidence  that 
the  native-born  American  does  not  regard  the  change  as 
wholly  a  blessing,  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  but  few 
of  them  now  follow  the  sea,  and  scarcely  a  vestige  is  left 
of  the  old  New  England  seafaring  population  except  in 
the  fisheries — where  sails  are  still  the  rule.  Doubtless  the 
explanation  of  this  lies  in  the  changed  conditions  of  sea- 
faring as  a  business.  In  the  days  which  I  have  sketched 
in  the  first  chapter,  the  boy  of  good  habits  and  reasonable 
education  who  shipped  before  the  mast,  was  fairly  sure  of 
prompt  promotion  to  the  quarter-deck,  of  a  right  to  share 
in  the  profits  of  the  voyage,  and  of  finally  owning  his  own 
ship.  After  1860  all  these  conditions  changed.  Steam- 
ships, always  costly  to  build,  involved  greater  and  greater 
investments  as  their  size  increased.  Early  in  the  history 
of  steam  navigation  they  became  exclusively  the  property 
of  corporations.  Latterly  the  steamship  lines  have  be- 
come adjuncts  to  great  railway  lines,  and  are  conducted 
by  the  practiced  stock  manipulator — not  by  the  veteran 
sea  captain. 

Richard  J.  Cleveland,  a  successful  merchant  navigator 
of  the  early  days  of  the  nineteenth  century,  when  little 
more  than  a  lad,  undertook  an  enterprise,  thus  described 
by  him  in  a  letter  from  Havre: 

"I  have  purchased  a  cutter-sloop  of  forty-three  tons  burden, 
on  a  credit  of  two  years.  This  vessel  was  built  at  Dieppe  and 
fitted  out  for  a  privateer;  was  taken  by  the  English,  and  has 


MERCHANT  MARINE  57 

been  plying  between  Dover  and  Calais  as  a  packet-boat.  She 
has  excellent  accommodations  and  sails  fast.  I  shall  copper 
her,  put  her  in  ballast,  trim  with  £1000  or  £1500  sterling  in  cargo, 
and  proceed  to  the  Isle  of  France  and  Bourbon,  where  I  expect 
to  sell  her,  as  well  as  the  cargo,  at  a  very  handsome  profit,  and 


AN  ARMED  CUTTER 


have  no  doubt  of  being  well  paid  for  my  twelve  months'  work, 
calculating  to  be  with  you  next  August." 

In  such  enterprises  the  young  American  sailors  were 
always  engaging — braving  equally  the  perils  of  the  deep 


58  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

and  not  less  treacherous  reefs  and  shoals  of  business, 
but  always  struggling  to  become  their  own  masters,  to 
command  their  own  ships,  and  if  possible,  to  carry  their 
own  cargoes.  The  youth  of  a  nation  that  had  fought  for 
political  independence,  fought  themselves  for  economic 
independence. 

To  men  of  this  sort  the  conditions  bred  by  the  steam- 
carrying  trade  were  intolerable.  To-day  a  great  steam- 
ship may  well  cost  $2,000,000.  It  must  have  the  favor  of 
railway  companies  for  cargoes,  must  possess  expensive 
wharves  at  each  end  of  its  route,  must  have  an  army  of 
agents  and  solicitors  ever  engaged  upon  its  business. 
The  boy  who  ships  before  the  mast  on  one  of  them,  is  less 
likely  to  rise  to  the  position  of  owner,  than  the  switchman 
is  to  become  railroad  president — the  latter  progress  has 
been  known,  but  of  the  former  I  can  not  find  a  trace.  So 
comparatively  few  young  Americans  choose  the  sea  for 
their  workshop  in  this  day  of  steam. 

If  this  book  were  the  story  of  the  merchant  marine  of 
all  lands  and  all  peoples,  a  chapter  on  the  development  of 
the  steamship  would  be,  perhaps,  the  most  important,  and 
certainly  the  most  considerable  part  of  it.  '(But  with  the 
adoption  of  steam  for  ocean  carriage  began  the  decline  of 
American  shipping,  a  decline  hastened  by  the  use  of  iron, 
and  then  steel,  for  hulls.  Though  we  credit  ourselves — 
not  without  some  protest  from  England — with  the  inven- 
tion of  the  steamboat,  the  adaptation  of  the  screw  to  the 
propulsion  of  vessels,  and  the  invention  of  triple-expan- 
sion engines,  yet  it  was  England  that  seized  upon  these 
inventions  and  with  them  won,  and  long  held,  the  com- 
mercial mastery  of  the  seas.  To-day  (1919)  it  seems  that 
economic  conditions  have  so  changed  that  the  shipyards 
of  the  United  States  will  again  compete  for  the  business 
'  of  the  world.  We  are  building  ships  as  good — perhaps 


MERCHANT   MARINE  59 

better — than  can  be  constructed  anywhere  else,  but  thus 
far  we  have  not  been  able  to  build  them  as  cheap.  Ac- 
cordingly our  builders  have  been  restricted  to  the  con- 
struction of  warships,  coasters,  and  yachts.  National 
pride  has  naturally  demanded  that  all  vessels  for  the  navy 
be  built  in  American  shipyards,  and  a  federal  law  has 
long  restricted  the  trade  between  ports  of  the  United 
States  to  ships  built  here.  The  lake  shipping,  too — pro- 
digious in  numbers  and  activity — is  purely  American. 
\  But  until  within  a  few  years  the  American  flag  had  almost 
disappeared  from  vessels  engaged  in  international  trade. 
Americans  in  many  instances  are  the  owners  of  ships  fly- 
ing the  British  flag,  for  the  United  States  laws  deny 
American  registry — which  is  to  a  ship  what  citizenship  is 
to  a  man — to  vessels  built  abroad.  While  the  result  of 
this  attempt  to  protect  American  shipyards  has  been  to 
drive  our  flag  from  the  ocean,  there  are  indications  now 
that  our  shipyards  are  prepared  to  build  as  cheaply  as 
others,  and  that  the  flag  will  again  figure  on  the  high  seas. 
Popular  history  has  ascribed  to  Robert  Fulton  the 
honor  of  building  and  navigating  the  first  steamboat. 
Like  claims  to  priority  in  many  other  inventions,  this  one 
is  strenuously  contested.  Two  years  before  Fulton's 
"Clermont"  appeared  on  the  Hudson,  John  Stevens,  of 
Hoboken,  built  a  steamboat  propelled  by  a  screw,  the 
model  of  which  is  still  in  the  Stevens  Polytechnic  Insti- 
tute. Earlier  still,  John  Fitch,  of  Pennsylvania,  had  made 
a  steamboat,  and  urged  it  upon  Franklin,  upon  Washing- 
ton, and  upon  the  American  Philosophical  Society  with- 
out success ;  tried  it  then  with  the  Spanish  minister,  and 
was  offered  a  subsidy  by  the  King  of  Spain  for  the 
exclusive  right  to  the  invention.  Being  a  patriotic  Ameri- 
can, Fitch  refused./  "My  invention  must  be  first  for  my 
own  country  and  then  for  all  the  world,"  said  he.  But 


60  THE  STORY   OF   OUR 

later,  after  failing  to  reap  any  profit  from  his  discovery, 
and  finding  himself  deprived  even  of  the  honor  of  first  in- 
vention, he  wrote  bitterly  in  1792 : 

"The  strange  ideas  I  had  at  that  time  of  serving  my 
country,  without  the  least  suspicion  that  my  only  reward 
would  be  contempt  and  opprobrious  names !  To  refuse  the 
offer  of  the  Spanish  nation  was  the  act  of  a  blockhead,  of 
which  I  should  not  be  guilty  again." 

Indeed  Fitch's  fortune  was  hard.  His  invention  was 
a  work  of  the  purest  originality.  He  was  unread,  unedu- 
cated, and  had  never  so  much  as  heard  of  a  steam-engine 
when  the  idea  of  propelling  boats  by  steam  came  to  him. 
After  repeated  rebuffs — the  lot  of  every  inventor — he  at 
length  secured  from  the  State  of  New  Jersey  the  right  to 
navigate  its  waters  for  a  term  of  years.  With  this  a  stock 
company  was  formed  and  the  first  boat  built  and  rebuilt. 
At  first  it  was  propelled  by  a  single  paddle  at  the  stem; 
then  by  a  series  of  paddles  attached  to  an  endless  chain 
on  each  side  of  the  boat;  afterwards  by  paddle-wheels, 
and  finally  by  upright  oars  at  the  side.  The  first  test 
made  on  the  Delaware  River  in  August,  1787 — twenty 
years  before  Fulton — in  the  presence  of  many  distin- 
guished citizens,  some  of  them  members  of  the  Federal 
Convention,  which  had  adjourned  for  the  purpose,  was 
completely  successful.  The  boiler  burst  before  the  after- 
noon was  over,  but  not  before  the  inventor  had  demon- 
strated the  complete  practicability  of  his  invention. 

For  ten  years,  struggling  the  while  against  cruel  pov- 
erty, John  Fitch  labored  to  perfect  his  steamboat,  and  to 
force  it  upon  the  public  favor,  but  in  vain.  Never  in  the 
history  of  invention  did  a  new  device  more  fully  meet  the 
traditional  "long-felt  want."  Here  was  a  growing  nation 
made  up  of  a  fringe  of  colonies  strung  along  an  extended 
coast.  No  roads  were  built.  Dense  forests  blocked  the 


MERCHANT   MARINE  61 

way  inland,  but  were  pierced  by  navigable  streams,  deep 
bays,  and  placid  sounds.  The  steamboat  was  the  one 
thing  necessary  to  cement  American  unity  and  speed 
American  progress ;  but  a  full  quarter  of  a  century  passed 
after  Fitch  had  steamed  up  and  down  the  Delaware  before 
the  new  system  of  propulsion  became  commercially  use- 
ful. The  inventor  did  not  live  to  see  that  day,  and  was 
at  least  spared  the  pain  of  seeing  a  later  pioneer  get  credit 
for  a  discovery  he  thought  his  own.  In  1798  he  died — of 
an  overdose  of  morphine — leaving  behind  the  bitter  writ- 
ing: "The  day  will  come  when  some  powerful  man  will 
get  fame  and  riches  from  my  invention ;  but  nobody  will 
ever  believe  that  poor  John  Fitch  can  do  anything  worthy 
of  attention." 

In  trying  to  make  amends  for  the  long  injustice  done 
to  poor  Fitch,  modern  history  has  come  near  to  going  be- 
yond justice.  It  is  undoubted  that  Fitch  applied  steam  to 
the  propulsion  of  a  boat,  long  before  Fulton,  but  that 
Fitch  himself  was  the  first  inventor  is  not  so  certain. 
Blasco  de  Garay  built  a  rude  steamboat  in  Barcelona  in 
1 543 ;  in  Germany  one  Papin  built  one  a  few  years  later, 
which  bargemen  destroyed  lest  their  business  be  injured 
by  it.  Jonathan  Hulls,  of  Liverpool,  in  1737  built  a  stern- 
wheeler,  rude  engravings  of  which  are  still  in  existence, 
and  Symington  in  1801  built  a  thoroughly  practical  steam- 
boat at  Dundee.  Tis  a  vexed  question,  and  perhaps  it  is 
well  enough  to  say  that  Fitch  first  scented  the  commercial 
possibilities  of  steam  navigation,  while  Fulton  actually 
developed  them — the  one  "raised"  the  fox,  while  the  other 
was  in  at  the  death. 

To  trace  a  great  idea  to  the  actual  birth  is  apt  to  be 
destructive  to  national  pride.  It  is  even  said  that  the 
Chinese  of  centuries  ago  understood  the  value  of  the 


62  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

screw-propeller — for  inventing  which  our  adoptive  citizen 
Ericsson  stands  in  bronze  on  New  York's  Battery. 

From  the  time  of  Robert  Fulton,  at  any  rate,  dates  the 
commercial  usage  of  the  steamboat.  Others  had  done  the 
pioneering — Fitch  on  the  Delaware,  James  Rumsey  on  the 
Potomac,  William  Longstreet  on  the  Savannah,  Elijah 
Ormsley  on  the  waters  of  Rhode  Island,  while  Samuel 
Morey  had  actually  traveled  by  steamboat  from  New 
Haven  to  New  York.  Fulton's  craft  was  not  materially 
better  than  any  of  these,  but  it  happened  to  be  launched 

on 

• that  tide  in  the  affairs  of  men 

Which,  taken  at  the  flood,  leads  on  to  fortune. 

But  the  flood  of  that  tide  did  not  come  to  Fulton 
without  long  waiting  and  painstaking  preparation.  He 
was  the  son  of  an  Irish  immigrant,  and  born  in  Pennsyl- 
vania in  1765.  To  inventive  genius  he  added  rather  un- 
usual gifts  for  drawing  and  painting ;  for  a  time  followed 
the  calling  of  a  painter  of  miniatures  and  went  to  London 
to  study  under  Benjamin  West,  whom  all  America  of  that 
day  thought  a  genius  scarcely  second  to  Raphael  or 
Titian.  He  was  not,  like  poor  Fitch,  doomed  to  the  nar- 
rowest poverty  and  shut  out  from  the  society  of  the  men 
of  light  and  learning  of  the  day,  for  we  find  him,  after  his 
London  experience,  a  member  of  the  family  of  Joel  Bar- 
low, then  our  minister  to  France.  By  this  time  his  ambi- 
tion had  forsaken  art  for  mechanics,  and  he  was  deep  in 
plans  for  diving  boats,  submarine  torpedoes,  and  steam- 
boats. Through  various  channels  he  succeeded  in  getting 
his  plan  for  moving  vessels  with  steam,  before  Napoleon 
— then  First  Consul — who  ordered  the  Minister  of  Marine 
to  treat  with  the  inventor.  The  Minister  in  due  time  sug- 
gested that  10,000  francs  be  spent  on  experiments  to  be 
made  in  the  Harbor  of  Brest.  To  this  Napoleon  assented, 


MERCHANT   MARINE  63 

and  sent  Fulton  to  the  Institute  of  France  .to  be  examined 
as  to  his  fitness  to  conduct  the  tests.  Now  the  Institute 
is  the  most  learned  body  in  all  France.  In  1860  one  of 
its  members  wrote  a  book  to  prove  that  the  earth  does  not 
revolve  upon  its  axis,  nor  move  about  the  sun.  In  1878, 
when  Edison's  phonograph  was  being  exhibited  to  the 
eminent  scientists  of  the  Institute,  one  rushed  wrathfully 
down  the  aisle  and  seizing  by  the  collar  the  man  who 
manipulated  the  instrument,  cried  out,  "Wretch,  we  are 
not  to  be  made  dupes  of  by  a  ventriloquist!"  So  it  is 
readily  understandable  that  after  being  referred  to  the 
Institute,  Fulton  and  his  project  disappeared  for  a  long 
time. 

The  learned  men  of  the  Institute  of  France  were  not 
alone  in  their  incredulity.  In  1803  the  Philosophical  So- 
ciety of  Rotterdam  wrote  to  the  American  Philosophical 
Society  of  Philadelphia,  for  information  concerning  the 
development  of  the  steam-engine  in  the  United  States. 
The  question  was  referred  to  Benjamin  H.  Latrobe,  the 
most  eminent  engineer  in  America,  and  his  report  was 
published  approvingly  in  the  Transactions.  "A  sort  of 
mania,"  wrote  Mr.  Latrobe, "had  indeed  prevailed  and  not 
yet  entirely  subsided,  for  impelling  boats  by  steam-en- 
gines." But  his  scientific  hearers  would  at  once  see  that 
there  were  general  objections  to  it  which  could  not  be 
overcome.  "These  are,  first,  the  weight  of  the  engine  and 
of  the  fuel;  second,  the  large  space  it  occupies;  third, 
the  tendency  of  its  action  to  rack  the  vessel  and  render 
it  leaky ;  fourth,  the  expense  of  maintenance ;  fifth,  the 
irregularity  of  its  motion  and  the  motion  of  the  water  in 
the  boiler  and  cistern,  and  of  the  fuel  vessel  in  rough 
weather ;  sixth,  the  difficulty  arising  from  the  liability  of 
the  paddles,  or  oars,  to  break,  if  light,  and  from  the 
weight  if  made  strong." 


64  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

But  the  steamboat  survived  this  scientific  indictment  in 
six  counts.  Visions  proved  more  real  than  scientific 
reasoning. 

While  in  the  shadow  of  the  Institute's  disfavor,  Fulton 
fell  in  with  the  new  minister  to  France,  Robert  R.  Living- 
ston, and  the  result  of  this  acquaintance  was  that  America 
gained  primacy  in  steam  navigation,  and  Napoleon  lost 
the  chance  to  get  control  of  an  invention  which,  by  revolu- 
tionizing navigation,  might  have  broken  that  British  con- 
trol of  the  sea,  that  in  the  end  destroyed  the  Napoleonic 
empire.  Livingston  had  long  taken  an  intelligent  interest 
in  the  possibilities  of  steam  power,  and  had  built  and 
tested,  on  the  Hudson,  an  experimental  steamboat  of  his 
own.  Perhaps  it  was  this,  as  much  as  anything,  which 
aroused  the  interest  of  Thomas  Jefferson — to  whom  he 
owed  his  appointment  as  minister  to  France — for  Jeffer- 
son was  actively  interested  in  every  sort  of  mechanical 
device,  and  his  mind  was  not  so  scientific  as  to  be  inhos- 
pitable to  new,  and  even,  revolutionary,  ideas.  But  Liv- 
ingston was  not  possessed  by  that  idea  which,  in  later 
years,  politicians  have  desired  us  to  believe  especially 
Jeffersonian.  He  was  no  foe  to  monopoly.  Indeed,  be- 
fore he  had  perfected  his  steamboat,  he  used  his  political 
influence  to  get  from  New  York  the  concession  of  the 
exclusive  right  to  navigate  her  lakes  and  rivers  by  steam. 
The  grant  was  only  to  be  effective  if  within  one  year  he 
should  produce  a  boat  of  twenty  tons,  moved  by  steam. 
But  he  failed,  and  in  1801  went  to  France,  where  he  found 
Fulton.  A  partnership  was  formed,  and  it  was  largely 
through  Livingston's  money  and  influence  that  Fulton 
succeeded  where  others,  earlier  in  the  field  than  he,  had 
failed.  Yet  even  so,  it  was  not  all  easy  sailing  for  him. 
"When  I  was  building  my  first  steamboat/'  he  said,  "the 
project  was  viewed  by  the  public  either  with  indifference, 


MERCHANT   MARINE  65 

or  with  contempt  as  a  visionary  scheme.    My  friends,  in- 
deed,   were   civil,   but   were   shy.      They  listened    with 
patience  to  my  explanations,  but  with  a  settled  cast  of 
incredulity  upon  their  countenances.    I  felt  the  full  force 
of  the  lamentation  of  the  poet- 
Truths  would  you  teach,  or  save  a  sinking  land; 
All  fear,  none  aid  you,  and  few  understand. 


'THE  LOUD  LAUGH  OFTEN  ROSE  AT  MY  EXPENSE 


"As  I  had  occasion  to  pass  daily  to  and  from  the  build- 
ing yard  while  my  boat  was  in  progress,  I  have  often 
loitered  unknown  near  the  idle  groups  of  strangers  gath- 
ered in  little  circles  and  heard  various  inquiries  as  to  the 
object  of  this  new  vehicle.  The  language  was  uniformly 
that  of  scorn,  or  sneer,  or  ridicule.  The  loud  laugh  often 
rose  at  my  expense ;  the  dry  jest ;  the  wise  calculation  of 


66  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

losses  and  expenditures;  the  dull,  but  endless  repetition 
of  'the  Fulton  Folly.'  Never  did  a  single  encouraging  re- 
mark, a  bright  hope,  or  a  warm  wish  cross  my  path." 

The  boat  which  Fulton  was  building  while  the  wise- 
acres wagged  their  heads  and  prophesied  disaster,  was 
named  "The  Clermont."  She  was  130  feet  long,  18  feet 
wide,  half-decked,  and  provided  with  a  mast  and  sail.  In 
the  undecked  part  were  the  boiler  and  engine,  set  in 
masonry.  The  wheels  were  fifteen  feet  in  diameter,  with 
buckets  four  feet  wide,  dipping  two  feet  into  the  water. 

It  was  1806  when  Fulton  came  home  to  begin  her  con- 
struction. Since  his  luckless  experience  with  the  French 
Institute  he  had  tested  a  steamer  on  the  Seine;  failed  to 
interest  Napoleon ;  tried,  without  success,  to  get  the  Brit- 
ish Government  to  adopt  his  torpedo ;  tried  and  failed 
again  with  the  American  Government  at  Washington. 
Fulton's  thoughts  seemed  to  have  been  riveted  on  his 
torpedo;  but  Livingston  was  confident  of  the  future  of 
the  steamboat,  and  had  had  an  engine  built  for  it  in  Eng- 
land, which  Fulton  found  lying  on  a  wharf,  freight  un- 
paid, on  his  return  from  Europe.  The  State  of  New  York 
had  meantime  granted  the  two  another  monopoly  of  steam 
navigation,  and  gave  them  until  1807  to  prove  their 
ability  and  right.  The  time,  though  brief,  proved  suffi- 
cient, and  on  the  afternoon  of  August  7,  1807,  the 
"Clermont"  began  her  epoch-making  voyage.  The  dis- 
tance to  Albany — 150  miles — she  traversed  in  thirty-two 
hours,  and  the  end  of  the  passenger  sloop  traffic  on  the 
Hudson  was  begun.  Within  a  year  steamboats  were  ply- 
ing on  the  Raritan,  the  Delaware,  and  Lake  Champlain, 
and  the  development  and  use  of  the  new  invention  would 
have  been  more  rapid  than  it  was,  save  for  the  monopoly 
rights  which  had  been  granted  to  Livingston  and  Fulton. 
They  had  the  sole  right  to  navigate  by  steam,  the  waters 


MERCHANT   MARINE  67 

of  New  York.  Well  and  good.  But  suppose  the  stream 
navigated  touched  both  New  York  and  New  Jersey. 
What  then  ?  Would  it  be  seriously  asserted  that  a  steamer 
owned  by  New  Jersey  citizens  could  not  land  passengers 
at  a  New  York  port  ? 

Fulton  and  Livingston  strove  to  protect  their  mo- 
nopoly, and  the  two  States  were  brought  to  the  brink  of 
war.  In  the  end  the  courts  settled  the  difficulty  by  estab- 
lishing the  exclusive  control  of  navigable  waters  by  the 
Federal  Government. 

From  the  day  the  "Clermont"  breasted  the  tide  of  the 
Hudson  there  was  no  check  in  the  conquest  of  the  waters 
by  steam.  Up  the  narrowest  rivers,  across  the  most 
tempestuous  bays,  along  the  placid  waters  of  Long  Island 
Sound,  coasting  along  the  front  yard  of  the  nation  from 
Portland  to  Savannah  the  steamboats  made  their  way, 
tying  the  young  nation  indissolubly  together.  Curiously 
enough  it  was  Livingston's  monopoly  that  gave  the  first 
impetus  to  the  extension  of  steam  navigation.  A 
mechanic  by  the  name  of  Robert  L.  Stevens,  one  of  the 
first  of  a  family  distinguished  in  New  York  and  New 
Jersey,  built  a  steamboat  on  the  Hudson.  After  one  or 
two  trips  had  proved  its  usefulness,  the  possessors  of  the 
monopoly  became  alarmed  and  began  proceedings  against 
the  new  rival.  Driven  from  the  waters  about  New  York, 
Stevens  took  his  boat  around  to  Philadelphia.  Thus  not 
only  did  he  open  an  entirely  new  field  of  river  and  inland 
water  transportation,  but  the  trip  to  Philadelphia  demon- 
strated the  entire  practicability  of  steam  for  use  in  coast- 
wise navigation.  Thereafter  the  vessels  multiplied  rap- 
idly on  all  American  waters.  Fulton  himself  set  up  a 
shipyard,  in  which  he  built  steam  ferries,  river  and  coast- 
wise steamboats.  In  1809  he  associated  himself  with  Nich- 
olas J.  Roosevelt,  to  whom  credit  is  due  for  the  invention 


68  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

of  the  vertical  paddle-wheel,  in  a  partnership  for  tHe  pur- 
pose of  putting  steamboats  on  the  great  rivers  of  the 
Mississippi  Valley,  and  in  1811  the  "New  Orleans"  was 
built  and  navigated  by  Roosevelt  himself,  from  Pittsburg 
to  the  city  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi.  The  voyage 
took  fourteen  days,  and  before  undertaking  it,  he  de- 
scended the  two  rivers  in  a  flatboat,  to  familiarize  himself 
with  the  channel.  The  biographer  of  Roosevelt  prints  an 
interesting  letter  from  Fulton,  in  which  he  says,  "I  have 
no  pretensions  to  be  the  inventor  of  the  steamboat.  Hun- 
dreds of  others  have  tried  it  and  failed."  Four  years 
after  Roosevelt's  voyage,  the  "Enterprise"  made  for  the 
first  time  in  history  the  voyage  up  the  Mississippi  and 
Ohio  Rivers  from  New  Orleans  to  Louisville,  and  from 
that  era  the  great  rivers  may  be  said  to  have  been  fairly 
opened  to  that  commerce,  which  in  time  became  the 
greatest  agency  in  the  building  up  of  the  nation.  The 
Great  Lakes  were  next  to  feel  the  quickening  influence  of 
the  new  motive  power,  but  it  was  left  for  the  Canadian, 
John  Hamilton,  of  Queenston,  to  open  this  new  field.  The 
progress  of  steam  navigation  on  both  lakes  and  rivers  will 
be  more  fully  described  in  the  chapters  devoted  to  that 
topic. 

So  rapidly  now  did  the  use  of  the  steamboat  increase 
on  Long  Island  Sound,  on  the  rivers,  and  along  the  coast 
that  the  newspapers  began  to  discuss  gravely  the  question 
whether  the  supply  of  fuel  would  long  hold  out.  The 
boats  used  wood  exclusively — coal  was  then  but  little 
used — and  despite  the  vast  forests  which  covered  the 
face  of  the  land  the  price  of  wood  in  cities  rose  because 
of  their  demand.  Mr.  McMaster,  the  eminent  historian, 
discovers  that  in  1825  thirteen  steamers  plying  on  the 
Hudson  burned  sixteen  hundred  cords  of  wood  a  week. 
Fourteen  hundred  cords  more  were  used  by  New  York 


MERCHANT   MARINE 


69 


70  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

ferry  boats,  and  each  trip  of  a  Sound  steamer  consumed 
sixty  cords.  The  American  who  traverses  the  placid 
waters  of  Long  Island  Sound  to-day  in  one  of  the  swift 
and  splendid  steamboats  of  the  Fall  River  or  other  Sound 
lines,  enjoys  very  different  accommodations  from  those 
which  in  the  second  quarter  of  the  last  century  were  re- 
garded as  palatial.  The  luxury  of  that  day  was  a  simple 
sort  at  best.  When  competition  became  strong,  the  old 
Fulton  company,  then  running  boats  to  Albany,  an- 
nounced as  a  special  attraction  the  "safety  barge."  This 
was  a  craft  without  either  sails  or  steam,  of  about  two 
hundred  tons  burden,  and  used  exclusively  for  passengers. 
It  boasted  a  spacious  dining-room,  ninety  feet  long,  a  deck 
cabin  for  ladies,  a  reading  room,  a  promenade  deck, 
shaded  and  provided  with  seats.  One  of  the  regular 
steamers  of  the  line  towed  it  to  Albany,  and  its  passengers 
were  assured  freedom  from  the  noise  and  vibration  of 
machinery,  as  well  as  safety  from  possible  boiler  explo- 
sions— the  latter  rather  a  common  peril  of  steamboating 
in  those  days. 

It  was  natural  that  the  restless  mind  of  the  American, 
untrammeled  by  traditions  and  impatient  of  convention, 
should  turn  eagerly  and  early  to  the  question  of  crossing 
the  ocean  by  steam.  When  the  rivers  had  been  made  busy 
highways  for  puffing  steamboats ;  when  the  Great  Lakes, 
as  turbulent  as  the  ocean,  and  as  vast  as  the  Mediter- 
ranean, were  conquered  by  the  new  marine  device ;  when 
steamships  plied  between  New  York,  Philadelphia,  Balti- 
more, Savannah,  and  Charleston,  braving  what  is  by  far 
more  perilous  than  mid-ocean,  the  danger  of  tempests  on  a 
lee  shore,  and  the  shifting  sands  of  Hatteras,  there  seemed 
to  the  enterprising  man  no  reason  why  the  passage  from 
New  York  to  Liverpool  might  not  be  made  by  the  same 
agency.  The  scientific  authorities  were  all  against  it. 


MERCHANT  MARINE  71 

Curiously  enough,  the  weight  of  scientific  authority  is  al- 
ways against  anything  new.  Marine  architects  and  math- 
ematicians proved  to  their  own  satisfaction  at  least  that 
no  vessel  could  carry  enough  coal  to  cross  the  Atlantic, 
that  the  coal  bunkers  would  have  to  be  bigger  than  the 
vessel  itself,  in  order  to  hold  a  sufficient  supply  for  the 
furnaces.  It  is  a  matter  of  history  that  an  eminent  Brit- 
ish scientist  was  engaged  in  delivering  a  lecture  on  this 
very  subject  in  Liverpool  when  the  "Savannah,"  the  first 
steamship  to  cross  the  ocean,  steamed  into  the  harbor.  It 
is  fair,  however,  to  add  that  the  "Savannah's"  success  did 
not  wholly  destroy  the  contention  of  the  opponents  of 
steam  navigation,  for  she  made  much  of  the  passage  un- 
der sail,  being  fitted  only  with  what  we  would  call  now 
"auxiliary  steam  power.'  This  was  in  1819,  but  so  slow 
were  the  shipbuilders  to  progress  beyond  what  had  been 
done  with  the  "Savannah,"  that  in  1835  a  highly  respected 
British  scientist  said  in  tones  of  authority :  "As  to  the  pro- 
ject which  was  announced  in  the  newspapers,  of  making 
the  voyage  from  New  York  to  Liverpool  direct  by  steam, 
it  was,  he  had  no  hesitation  in  saying,  perfectly  chimeri- 
cal, and  they  might  as  well  talk  of  making  a  voyage  from 
New  York  or  Liverpool  to  the  moon."  Nevertheless,  in 
three  years  from  that  time  transatlantic  steam  lines  were 
in  operation,  and  the  doom  of  the  grand  old  packets  was 
sealed. 

The  American  who  will  read  history  free  from  that 
national  prejudice  which  is  miscalled  patriotism,  can  not 
fail  to  be  impressed  by  the  fact  that,  while  as  a  nation  we 
have  led  the  world  in  the  variety  and  audacity  of  our 
inventions,  it  is  nearly  always  some  other  nation  that 
most  promptly  and  most  thoroughly  utilizes  the  genius  of 
our  inventors.  Emphatically  was  this  the  case  with  the 
application  of  steam  power  to  ocean  steamships.  Ameri- 


72  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

cans  showed  the  way,  but  Englishmen  set  out  upon  it  and 
were  traveling  it  regularly  before  another  American  ves- 
sel followed  in  the  wake  of  the  "Savannah."    In  1838  two 
English  steamships  crossed  the  Atlantic  to  New  York,  the 
"Sirius"  and  the  "Great  Western."    That  was  the  begin- 
ning of  that  great  fleet  of  British  steamers  which  now 
plies  up  and  down  the  Seven  Seas  and  finds  its  poet  lau- 
reate in  Mr.  Kipling.    A  very  small  beginning  it  was,  too. 
The  "Sirius"  was  of  700  tons  burden  and  320  horse- 
power;   the  "Great  Western"  was  212  feet  long,  with  a 
tonnage  of  1340  and  engines  of  400  horse-power.     The 
"Sirius"  brought  seven  passengers  to  New  York,  at  a 
time  when  the  sailing  clippers  were  carrying  from  eight 
hundred  to  a  thousand  immigrants,  and  from  twenty  to 
forty  cabin  passengers.     To  those  who  accompanied  the 
ship  on  her  maiden  voyage  it  must  have  seemed  to  justify 
the  doubts  expressed  by  the  mathematicians  concerning 
the  practicability  of  designing  a  steamship  which  could 
carry  enough  coal  to  drive  the  engines  all  the  way  across 
the   Atlantic,    for  the   luckless   "Sirius"   exhausted   her 
four  hundred  and  fifty  tons  of  coal  before  reaching  Sandy 
Hook,  and  could  not  have  made  the  historic  passage  up 
New  York  Bay  under  steam,  except  for  the  liberal  use  of 
spars  and  barrels  of  resin  which  she  had  in  cargo.    Her 
voyage   from   Cork  had  occupied   eighteen  and  a  half 
days.    The  "Great  Western,"  which  arrived  at  the  same 
time,  made  the  run  from  Queenstown  in  fifteen  days. 
That  two  steamships  should  lie  at  anchor  in  New  York 
Bay  at  the  same  time,  was  enough  to  stir  the  wonder  and 
awaken  the  enthusiasm  of  the  provincial  New  Yorkers 
of  that  day.    The  newspapers  published  editorials  on  the 
marvel,  and  the  editor  of  The  Courier  and  Enquirer,  the 
chief  maritime  authority  of  the  time,  hazarded  a  prophecy 
in  this  cautious  fashion : 


MERCHANT  MARINE  73 

"What  may  be  the  ultimate  fate  of  this  excitement — whether 
or  not  the  expenses  of  equipment  and  fuel  will  admit  of  the 
employment  of  these  vessels  in  the  ordinary  packet  service — 
we  cannot  pretend  to  form  an  opinion;  but  of  the  entire  feasi- 
bility of  the  passage  of  the  Atlantic  by  steam,  as  far  as  regards 
safety,  comfort,  and  dispatch,  even  in  the  roughest  and  most 
boisterous  weather,  the  most  skeptical  must  now  cease  to  doubt." 

Unfortunately  for  our  national  pride,  the  story  of  the 
development  of  the  ocean  steamship  industry  from  this 
small  beginning  to  its  present  prodigious  proportions,  is 
one  in  which  we  of  the  United  States  fill  but  a  little  space. 
We  have,  it  is  true,  furnished  the  rich  cargoes  of  grain, 
of  cotton,  and  of  cattle,  that  have  made  the  ocean  passage 
in  one  direction  profitable  for  shipowners.  We  found 
homes  for  the  millions  of  immigrants  "who  crowded  the 
'  'tween  decks"  of  steamers  of  every  flag  and  impelled 
the  companies  to  build  bigger  and  bigger  craft  to  carry 
the  ever  increasing  throngs.  And  in  these  later  days  of 
luxury  and  wealth  unparalleled,  we  have  supplied  the 
millionaires,  whose  demands  for  quarters  afloat  as  gor- 
geous as  a  Fifth  Avenue  club  have  resulted  in  the  build- 
ing of  floating  palaces.  America  has  supported  the  trans- 
atlantic lines,  but  almost  every  civilized  people  with  a  sea- 
coast  has  outdone  us  in  building  the  ships.  For  a  time, 
indeed,  it  seemed  that  we  should  speedily  overcome  the 
lead  that  England  immediately  took  in  building  steam- 
ships. Her  entrance  upon  this  industry  was,  as  we  have 
seen,  in  1838.  The  United  States  took  it  up  about  ten 
years  later.  In  1847  tne  Ocean  Steam  Navigation  Com- 
pany was  organized  in  this  country  and  secured  from 
the  Government  a  contract  to  carry  the  mails  between 
New  York  and  Bremen.  Two  ships  were  built  and  regu- 
lar trips  made  for  a  year  or  more ;  but  when  the  Govern- 
ment contract  expired  and  was  not  renewed,  the  venture 


74  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

was  abandoned.  About  the  same  time  the  owners  of  one 
of  the  most  famous  packet  lines,  the  Black  Ball,  tried  the 
experiment  of  supplementing  their  sailing  service  with  a 
steamship,  but  it  proved  unprofitable.  Shortly  after  the 
New  York  and  Havre  Steamship  Company,  with  two 
vessels  and  a  postal  subsidy  of  $150,000,  entered  the  field 
and  continued  operations  with  only  moderate  success  un- 
til 1868. 

The  only  really  notable  effort  of  Americans  in  the 
early  days  of  steam  navigation  to  get  their  share  of  trans- 
atlantic trade  —  indeed,  I  might  almost  say  the  most 
determined  effort  until  the  present  time — was  that  made 
by  the  projectors  of  the  Collins  line,  and  it  ended  in 
disaster,  in  heavy  financial  loss,  and  in  bitter  sorrow. 

E.  K.  Collins  was  a  New  York  shipping  merchant,  the 
organizer  and  manager  of  one  of  the  most  famous  of  the 
old  lines  of  sailing  packets  between  that  port  and  Liver- 
pool— the  Dramatic  line,  so  called  from  the  fact  that  its 
ships  were  named  after  popular  actors  of  the  day.  Recog- 
nizing the  fact  that  the  sailing  ship  was  fighting  a  losing 
fight  against  the  new  style  of  vessels,  Mr.  Collins  inter- 
ested a  number  of  New  York  merchants  in  a  distinctly 
American  line  of  transatlantic  ships.  It  was  no  easy 
task.  Capital  was  not  over  plenty  in  the  American  city 
which  now  boasts  itself  the  financial  center  of  the  world, 
while  the  opportunities  for  its  investment  in  enterprises 
longer  proved  and  less  hazardous  than  steamships  were 
numerous.  But  a  Government  mail  subsidy  of  $858,000 
annually  promised  a  sound  financial  basis,  and  made  the 
task  of  capitalization  possible.  It  seems  not  unlikely  that 
the  vicissitudes  of  the  line  were  largely  the  result  of  this 
subsidy,  for  one  of  its  conditions  was  extremely  onerous : 
namely,  that  the  vessels  making  twenty-six  voyages  an- 
nually between  New  York  and  Liverpool,  should  always 


MERCHANT  MARINE  75 

make  the  passage  in  better  time  than  the  British  Cunard 
line,  which  was  then  in  its  eighth  year.  However,  the 
Collins  line  met  the  exaction  bravely.  Four  vessels  were 
built,  the  "Atlantic,"  "Pacific,"  "Arctic,"  and  "Baltic," 
and  the  time  of  the  fleet  for  the  westward  passage  aver- 
aged eleven  days,  ten  hours  and  twenty-one  minutes, 
while  the  British  ships  averaged  twelve  days,  nineteen 
hours  and  twenty-six  minutes — a  very  substantial  tri- 
umph for  American  naval  architecture.  The  Collins 
liners,  furthermore,  were  models  of  comfort  and  even  of 
luxury  for  the  times.  They  averaged  a  cost  of  $700,000 
apiece,  a  good  share  of  which  went  toward  enhancing  the 
comfort  of  passengers.  To  our  English  cousins  these 
ships  were  at  first  as  much  of  a  curiosity  as  our  vestibuled 
trains  were  a  few  years  since.  When  the  "Atlantic"  first 
reached  Liverpool  in  1849,  tne  townspeople  by  the  thou- 
sand came  down  to  the  dock  to  examine  a  ship  with  a 
barber  shop,  fitted  with  the  curious  American  barber 
chairs  enabling  the  customer  to  recline  while  being 
shaved.  The  provision  of  a  special  deck-house  for  smok- 
ers, was  another  innovation,  while  the  saloon,  sixty-seven 
by  twenty  feet,  the  dining  saloon  sixty  by  twenty,  the  rich 
fittings  of  rosewood  and  satinwood,  marble-topped  tables, 
expensive  upholstery,  and  stained-glass  windows,  deco- 
rated with  patriotic  designs,  were  for  a  long  time  the 
subject  of  admiring  comment  in  the  English  press.  Old 
voyagers  who  crossed  in  the  halycon  days  of  the  Collins 
line  and  are  still  taking  the  "Atlantic  ferry,"  agree  in 
saying  that  the  increase  in  actual  comfort  is  not  so  great 
as  might  reasonably  be  expected.  Much  of  the  increased 
expenditures  of  the  companies  has  gone  into  more 
gorgeous  decoration,  vastly  more  of  course  into  pushing 
for  greater  speed ;  but  even  in  the  early  days  there  was  a 
lavish  table,  and  before  the  days  of  the  steamships  the 


76  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

packets  offered  such  private  accommodations  in  the  way 
of  roomy  staterooms  as  can  be  excelled  only  by  the 
"cabins  de  luxe"  of  the  modern  liner.  Aside  from  the 
question  of  speed,  however,  it  is  probable  that  the  two 
inventions  which  have  added  most  to  the  passengers'  com- 
fort, are  the  electric  light  and  artificial  refrigeration. 

The  Collins  line  charged  from  thirty  to  forty  dollars 
a  ton  for  freight,  a  charge  which  all  the  modern  improve- 
ments and  the  increase  in  the  size  of  vessels,  has  not 
materially  lessened.  In  six  years,  however,  the  cor- 
poration was  practically  bankrupt.  The  high  speed  re- 
quired by  the  Government  more  than  offset  the  generous 
subsidy,  and  misfortune  seemed  to  pursue  the  ships.  The 
"Arctic"  came  into  collision  with  a  French  steamer  in 
1854,  and  went  down  with  two  hundred  and  twenty-two 
of  the  two  hundred  and  sixty-eight  people  on  board.  The 
"Pacific"  left  Liverpool  June  23,  1856,  and  was  never 
more  heard  of.  Shortly  thereafter  the  subsidy  was  with- 
drawn, and  the  famous  line  went  slowly  down  to  oblivion. 

The  period  during  which  the  Collins  line  reached  its 
highest  development  and  began  its  decline  saw  the 
American  merchant  marine  attain  its  greatest  prosperity. 
Steam  was  beginning  its  conquest  of  the  seas,  but  its 
first  effect  was  to  stimulate  the  builders  of  Yankee  sailing 
ships  to  their  most  fruitful  endeavors.  Between  1846 
and  1860  the  deep-sea  tonnage  of  the  United  States 
reached  its  apogee — and  began  its  decline.  During  that 
period  we  rivalled  British  constructors  in  the  size,  speed 
and  comfort  of  our  steamships,  and  vastly  outdid  them 
in  all  the  qualities  of  our  sailing  clippers.  That  the 
United  States  made  so  admirable  a  showing  is,  in  view 
of  the  conditions,  most  remarkable.  For  our  shipping 
industry,  little  encouraged  by  legislation,  had  to  make  its 
way  against  the  pet  interest  of  Great  Britain  which  was 


MERCHANT  MARINE  77 

ostered  by  every  imaginable  governmental  care.  So  long 
s  ships  were  built  of  wood  and  driven  by  the  currents 

f  air  the  builders  of  the  United  States  needed  no  pro- 
ection.  The  magnificence  of  our  forests,  and  the  skill 
f  our  mechanics  gave  us  an  advantage  hard  to  be  over- 
ome.  But  when  building  for  European  buyers  our  ship- 
uilders  encountered  obstacles.  The  great  marine  insur- 
nce  company  known  as  Lloyds,  for  example,  was  at  all 
mes  eager  to  foster  British  as  against  American  ship- 
ing.  It  applied  to  Yankee-built  ships  seeking  registry 
jsts  that  were  either  altogether  arbitrary,  or  were  more 
evere  than  those  applied  to  British  vessels  of  the  same 
laracter.  It  had  long  been  the  practice  of  American 
lipbuilders  to  fasten  their  structures *  together  with 
reenails  or  wooden  pegs..  This  system  produced  a  ship 
lat  was  at  once  sturdy  and  flexible,  and  examples  of  this 
icthod  of  construction  plied  the  turbulent  seas  for  almost 

century  without  giving  signs  of  structural  weakness. 

ut  Lloyds  condemned  the  treenail  system.  The  British 
uyer  of  an  American  ship  was  forced  to  have  her  re- 
astened  with  metal,  unless  she  had  been  thus  constructed 
y  contract.  Nevertheless  Yankee  shipyards  did  a  big 
usiness  with  European  orders.  In  1854  the  Crimean 
Var  brought  such  a  demand  for  ships  for  England  and 
ranee  that  our  sales  to  these  nations  reached  the  gross 
mount  of  60,000  tons,  or  three  times  as  much  as  the  year 
revious.  Nowadays  when  a  single  great  ship  may  be 
F  35,000  tons  these  figures  do  not  seem  so  impressive  as 
icy  did  in  the  time  when  a  gross  tonnage  of  1,000  was 
olossal  for  a  ship. 

In  the  endeavor  to  meet  the  competition  of  the  steam- 
lips  the  New  England  yards  turned  out  some  master- 
ieces  of  ship  construction.  Not  only  the  eager  rivalry 
rith  the  new  steamships,  but  the  sudden  creation  of  an 


78  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

entirely  new  maritime  interest  by  the  discovery  of  gold 
in  California  in  1849  led  to  the  prodigious  development 
of  our  shipping  at  this  time. 

There  were  two  favorite  routes  then  to  the  gold  fields 
— for  the  path  across  the  plains  and  through  the  precipi- 
tous defiles  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  was  too  long,  too 
arduous  and  too  much  beset  by  hostile  Indians  to  be  much 
employed  by  seekers  after  the  golden  treasure  house. 

One  ocean  route  lay  around  Cape  Horn,  most  perilous 
and  tempestuous  of  ocean  passages  of  the  day.  Many 
hardy  mariners  of  that  era  have  left  records  of  the  sav- 
agery of  the  seas  off  that  bleak  and  iron-bound  cape,  and 
the  story  is  told  even  more  impressively  by  the  wrecks 
that  long  lay  bleaching  amongst  its  boulders.  Yet  it  was 
after  all  a  main-travelled  road  in  the  middle  of  the; 
Nineteenth  Century.  Around  Ihe  cape  itself,  or  through 
the  shorter  but  even  more  precarious  path  of  the  straits 
of  Magellan  passed  an  endless  series  of  stately  sailing < 
ships.  Some  of  them  made  amazing  records  for  speed 
on  the  voyage  between  Sandy  Hook  and  the  Golden1 
Gate.  The  "Comet"  is  said  to  have  accomplished  it  in 
83  days,  or  an  average  of  210  miles  a  day.  The  "Flying 
Fish"  did  it  three  times  with  an  average  of  101  days  to 
the  trip.  Most  famous  of  the  ships  on  the  Cape  Horn 
route  'was  the  "Sovereign  of  the  Seas"  referred  to  in  an^ 
earlier  chapter.  She  traded  both  to  California  and  the 
Orient.  On  a  voyage  in  1851  she  ran  into  a  hurricane 
off  Valparaiso,  and  in  the  gale  everything  above  the 
lower  mastheads  was  carried  away.  She  was  sailed  by 
a  brother  of  her  builder,  a  type  of  the  Yankee  sailor  of 
that  day  who  could  navigate  his  ship,  rebuild  her  in  case 
of  need,  sell  her  cargo,  speculate  with  the  proceeds  and 
always  bring  home  a  snug  profit  to  the  owners.  Crippled 
as  she  was  the  "Sovereign"  was  put  under  jury  rig  and 


MERCHANT  MARINE  79 

brought  into  San  Francisco  in  102  days  from  the  day  of 
leaving  New  York — one  of  the  fastest  trips  on  record. 
In  the  course  of  the  return  trip  the  ship  made  in  one 
24-hour  period  362  miles,  or  15  miles  an  hour — a  speed 
which  no  steamship  at  that  time  -was  capable  of  eclipsing. 
In  a  later  voyage  to  Liverpool  this  majestic  sailing  ship 
made  340  miles  in  one  day,  while  the  Cunard  steamship 
"Canada"  'was  making  200.  The  "Palestine"  about  the 
same  time  sailed  from  New  York  to  Liverpool  in  14 
days,  beating  the  Cunarder  that  sailed  at  the  same  hour. 
Indeed,  in  the  early  days  of  steam  navigation  the 
graceful  clippers,  with  a  fair  strong  breeze  could  always 
pick  up  a  steamer,  and  run  past  her  with  the  ease  with 
which  an  ocean  greyhound  to-day  out-distances  a  lumber- 
i  ing  tramp.  But  breezes  were  not  always  strong  or  fair. 
The  sailing  ship  had  reached  its  highest  development  and 
the  steamship  was  in  its  infancy.  The  outcome  of  the 
rivalry  was  certain  from  the  first. 

The  second  route  to  the  California  gold  fields  was  by 
way  of  the  Isthmus  of  Panama.  This  narrow  neck  of 
land,  since  cut  by  a  canal  made  possible  by  the  states- 
manship of  Theodore  Roosevelt  and  the  executive  genius 
of  George  W.  Goethals,  was  then  traversed  by  an  almost 
endless  procession  of  men  making  their  way  to  the  El 
Dorado  with  bright  visions  of  fortune  filling  their  minds 
or  returning  eastward,  often  disillusioned  in  mind  and 
broken  in  spirit. 

A  line  of  steamers  from  New  York  to  Colon  on  the 
iCarribean  coast,  and  from  Panama  north  to  San  Fran- 
j  cisco,  known  as  the  Pacific  Mail,  was  subsidized  by  the 
(United  States  Government  to  carry  the  mails  and  take 
I  care  of  the  passenger  traffic.  This  line  had  just  been 
!  established  when  the  discovery  of  gold  was  announced 
and  the  rush  to  California  began.  It  leaped  at  once  to 


8o  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

the  heights  of  prosperity.  The  steamers  from  New  York 
to  Colon,  touching  at  West  Indian  ports  were  already 
in  operation,  but  the  i,o58-ton  steamship  "California," 
a  side-wheeler,  200  feet  long,  and  carrying  a  full  ship 
rig  was  the  first  ship  to  be  put  on  the  Pacific  route,  and 
reached  Panama,  via  Cape  Horn,  in  mid-winter  of  1848. 
She  had  carried  a  fair  passenger  list  from  New  York, 
but  on  arriving  at  Panama  was  overwhelmed  by  the  rush 
of  gold  seekers  who  crowded  the  docks,  and  even  pushed 
out  into  the  bay  in  small  boats  hoping  to  be  able  to 
clamber  aboard.  She  was  quickly  followed  by  the 
"Panama"  and  "Oregon,"  of  about  the  same  dimensions, 
while  for  the  Atlantic  coast  route  the  "Georgia,"  "Illi- 
nois" and  "Ohio"  were  built,  of  about  250  feet,  and  2,300 
tons  each.  The  business  they  did  was  enormous.  In 
ten  years  after  its  establishment  the  Pacific  Mail  had  built 
29  steamers  of  a  gross  registry  of  38,000  tons,  had 
carried  175,000  passengers  to  California  and  had  brought 
back  $200,000,000  in  gold. 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  make  of  this  book  an  argu- 
ment for  or  against  the  system  of  encouraging  maritime 
enterprise  by  means  of  subsidies.     But  as  a  matter  of 
historical  record  it  is  apparent  that  the  great  fabric  of| 
the  Pacific  Mail  would  never  have  been  erected  save  forj 
the  payments  made  by  the  Government  for  its  carriage 
of  the  mails.    It  was  asserted  that  these  payments  were1 
insufficient  to  the  end  sought,  and  that  but  for  the  gold 
rush  the  line  would  not  have  sustained  itself.     That, 
however,  is  a  matter  of  speculation.     The  historic  fact 
is  that  the  Government  paid  the  line  for  a  prolonged 
period  from  $275,000  to  $290,000  a  year  for  the  mail 
service  between  New  York  and  Colon,  and  from  $308,000 
to  $348,000  for  the  same  service  on  the  Pacific. 

This  route  was  furthermore  protected  by  the  fact  that 


MERCHANT  MARINE  81 

the  voyage  between  New  York  and  San  Francisco  was 
construed  as  coastwise  traffic  even  though  it  was  inter- 
rupted by  a  land  passage  through  foreign  territory  at 
the  Isthmus.  The  importance  of  this  legal  determina- 
tion of  the  nature  of  the  voyage  lay  in  the  fact  that  the 
United  States  statutes  prohibit  the  participation  of  for- 
eign-built ships  in  our  coastwise  traffic.  Accordingly 
the  Pacific  Mail  had  a  complete  monopoly  of  steam  navi- 
gation between  New  York  and  California,  while  to 
American  sailing  ships  alone  came  all  the  tremendous 
overflow  traffic  of  gold  seekers  that  the  steamships  were 
unable  to  care  for. 

This  overflow  was  enormous.  The  men  seeking  to 
get  to  the  gold  fields  were  adventurous  spirits,  impatient 
of  delay  and  ready  to  spend  money  liberally  in  the  effort 
to  be  early  in  the  race  to  the  land  where  gold,  as  they 
thought,  was  to  be  picked  up  in  nuggets.  The  ship- 
yards of  New  England  and  New  York  were  crowded 
with  the  slim,  graceful  hulls  of  ships  building  for  the 
Isthmian  trade.  Donald  McKay  and  William  H.  Webb, 
whose  school  for  shipbuilders  stands  to-day  on  the  Har- 
lem River,  were  the  great  maritime  builders  of  the  day. 
Webb  launched  in  all  150  vessels.  McKay  had  ships  on 
every  one  of  the  Seven  Seas,  for  he  was  an  owner  as 
well  as  a  builder.  In  1855 — the  banner  year  of  Ameri- 
can shipbuilding — 381  ships  and  barks,  and  126  brigs 
were  built  for  deep-sea  trade.  We  were  building,  too, 
for  other  nations  than  our  own  for  in  that  year,  65,887 
tons  of  American  ships  were  sold  to  foreign  buyers.  No 
such  volume  of  sales  was  recorded  again  until  the  days 
of  the  Civil  War,  when  the  ravages  of  the  Confederate 
privateers  compelled  American  ship  owners  to  lay  up 
their  ships,  or  sell  them  to  owners  enjoying  the  protec- 
tion of  the  British  flag. 


82  THE  STORY   OF   OUR 

It  is  customary  to  ascribe  the  disappearance  of  the 
American  flag  from  the  high  seas  to  the  malign  activities 
of  the  Confederate  cruiser  "Alabama"  and  her  colleagues. 
But  their  depredations  were  only  a  contributing  cause. 
The  gradual  reduction  of  the  proportion  of  the  world's 
carrying  trade  held  by  the  United  States,  the  falling  off 
in  the  numbers  of  our  ships  began  to  be  apparent  as  early 
as  1856,  and  our  loss  of  primacy  among  maritime  nations 
soon  followed.  In  1855  our  yards  constructed  583,450 
tons  of  shipping,  in  1859  it  had  fallen  to  156,600.  In  1846 
we  carried  81.7  per  cent,  of  our  imports  and  exports  in 
our  own  ships.  In  1860  it  had  fallen  to  66.5.  The  Con- 
federate cruisers  did  their  sinister  work  after  that  date. 
t  ""A  very  material  change  in  the  policy  of  the  nation 
in  relation  to  the  encouragement  of  shipping  took  place 
during  this  period  of  decadence.  While  it  may  not 
have  been  the  full  reason  for  the  downfall  of  our  mer- 
chant  marine  it  cannot  but  have  contributed  to  that  re- 
suit.  The  question  of  the  propriety  of  granting  direct 
subsidies  from  the  United  States  territory  for  the  en- 
couragement of  private  owners  of  American  ships  has 
been  hotly  debated  for  three-quarters  of  a  century — 
ever  since  steam  was  applied  to  ocean  navigation.  So 
long  as  wooden  ships  and  sails  ruled  the  ocean  there 
was  no  question  of  subsidy.  None  could  compete  with 
us  in  building  or  manning  ships  of  that  character.  But 
steam  brought  a  new  problem,  and  one  that  was  rendered 
enormously  more  difficult  when  iron  began  to  take  the 
place  of  wood  as  shipbuilding  material. 

Great  Britain  set  the  first  example  of  shipping  sub- 
sidies when  in  1834,  prior  to  establishing  transatlantic 
steamship  lines,  she  started  short  steam  sea  routes  to 
Rotterdam  and  to  Gibraltar.  Both  had  government  aid; 
the  former  $85,000,  the  latter  $150,000  per  year.  These 


MERCHANT   MARINE  83 

services  being  successful  the  transatlantic  route  came  in 
for  attention.  Two  ships  were  built,  the  "Sirius"  and 
the  "Great  Britain."  Passages  averaged  sixteen  days. 
The  vessels  were  wooden,  side-wheelers.  Shortly  there- 
after the  British  government  awarded  to  Samuel  Cunard 
and  his  associates  a  mail  contract  for  $425,000  a  year. 
This  was  the  beginning  of  the  famous  Cunard  Line,  and 
the  sums  paid  it  for  mail  were  steadily  increased  as  the 
fleet  grew  and  the  need  for  closer  relations  between 
the  two  continents  developed.  The  United  States  made 
its  first  essay  in  subsidies  five  years  later  when  a  mail 
contract  for  $200,000  a  year  was  given  to  the  Ocean 
Steamship  Company  which  was  to  maintain  a  line  be- 
tween New  York  and  ports  in  continental  Europe.  Then 
followed  the  subsidies  to  the  Pacific  Mail,  and  to  the  Col- 
lins Line,  of  which  some  account  has  already  been  given. 
The  ships  of  the  latter  line  were  faster  and  sturdier 
than  those  of  the  Cunard  Line,  and  yet  by  a  cruel  mis- 
chance of  fate  two  of  the  best  Collins  ships,  the  "Arctic" 
and  the  "Pacific,"  were  lost  with  heavy  loss  of  life  while 
the  Cunard  Line  was  able  to  boast  up  to  the  time  of  the 
Great  War  that  it  had  never  lost  a  passenger. 

American  subsidies  on  account  of  mails  were  always 
less  than  those  paid  by  the  British  Government,  and  the 
advocates  of  subsidies  have  usually  ascribed  the  deca- 
dence of  the  American  marine  to  this  fact.  It  is  worth 
noting,  however,  that  subsidies  were  never  paid  to  sail- 
ing lines,  and  that  so  long  as  sails  and  wooden  hulls  J 
made  up  the  ocean-going  fleet  the  United  States  more 
than  held  her  own.  Nor  did  her  shipping  merchants 
while  these  conditions  lasted  have  to  meet  artificially 
stimulated  competition,  for  while  Great  Britain  pro- 
tected her  sailing  commerce  in  various  ways  subsidies 
with  her  a$  with  us  began  with  the  introduction  of  steam. 


84  THE  STORY   OF   OUR 

It  would  seem  that  Great  Britain  might  have  built 
up  even  her  great  maritime  supremency  under  steam 
without  artificial  stimulus.  For  though  to  an  American 
was  due  the  first  practical  application  of  the  steam 
engine  to  ship  propulsion,  England  was  far  ahead  of  us  in 
the  design  and  manufacture  of  engines  when  deep-sea 
steam  navigation  was  inaugurated.  Nevertheless  in  the 
year  1849-50  we  increased  our  steam  fleet  113  per  cent., 
and  compelled  the  Cunard  Line  to  build  new  ships  to 
compete  with  ours.  At  that  time  the  profession  of  sea- 
faring ranked  high  among  the  occupations  of  American 
men.  College  bred  men  took  to  the  sea  with  the  cer- 
tainty of  attaining  a  captain's  rank,  and  the  position  of 
part  owners.  They  had  not  only  their  comfortable 
salaries  and  quarters  that  were  capacious,  and  often  even 
luxurious,  but  they  were  allowed  a  percentage  on  freights, 
the  privilege  of  trading  on  their  own  account,  and  other 
opportunities  for  profit.  An  historian  of  the  British 
marine  who  had  no  reason  to  be  over  complimentary  to 
the  seamen  of  the  United  States  wrote: 

"During  the  first  half  of  this  century  the  masters  of 
American  vessels  were,  as  a  rule,  greatly  superior  to  those 
who  held  similar  positions  in  English  ships,  arising  in 
some  measure  from  the  limited  education  of  the  latter, 
which  was  not  sufficient  to  qualify  them  for  the  higher 
grades  of  the  merchant  service.  American  ship  owners 
required  of  their  masters  not  merely  a  knowledge  of 
navigation  and  seamanship,  but  of  commercial  pursuits, 
the  nature  of  exchange  and  art  of  correspondence,  and 
a  sufficient  knowledge  of  business  to  qualify  them  to  rep- 
resent the  interests  of  their  employers  to  advantage  with 
merchants  abroad." 

The  same  writer  quotes  the  British  consul  at  Phila- 
delphia as  saying: 


MERCHANT  MARINE  85 

"A  lad  intended  for  the  higher  grades  of  the  merchant 
service  in  this  country,  after  having  been  at  school  some 
years,  and  acquired  (in  addition  to  the  ordinary  branches 
of  school  learning)  a  complete  knowledge  of  mathe- 
matics, navigation,  ships-husbandry,  and  perhaps  French, 
is  perhaps  apprenticed  to  some  respectable  merchant  in 
whose  counting  house  he  remains  two  or  three  years,  or 
at  least  until  he  becomes  familiar  with  exchanges  and 
such  other  matters  as  may  qualify  him  to  represent  his 
principal  in  foreign  countries.  He  is  then  sent  to  sea, 
generally  in  the  capacity  of  second' mate,  from  which  he 
gradually  rises  to  that  of  captain." 

T^n  1 86 1  the  calamity  of  the  Civil  War  fell  upon  the 
nation.  The  sectional  antagonisms  which  culminated  in 
it  had  long  controlled  the  action  of  Congress,  and  ship- 
building and  the  merchant  marine  which  were  almost 
wholly  New  England  and  New  York  enterprises  were 
deprived  of  all  governmental  protection.  We  no  longer 
possessed  any  transatlantic  liners,  and  the  number  of 
ships  built  for  foreign  trade  had,  in  1860,  sunk  to  less 
than  a  third  of  those  built  in  1855.  When  war  came  its 
menace  hastened  the  process  of  destruction  already  far 
advanced.  It  was  at  once  recognized  that  the  Confed- 
eracy, being  wholly  without  a  navy,  could  only  prosecute 
a  war  upon  the  sea  by  means  of  privateers  and  commerce 
destroyers.  Practically  the  whole  of  our  merchant  fleet 
was  of  northern  ownership  and  was,  under  the  laws  of 
war  then,  and  now  obtaining,  fair  game  for  the  Con- 
federate cruisers.  Ship  owners,  therefore,  hastened  to 
lay  up  their  vessels  in  port  or  to  sell  them  abroad  that 
they  might  have  the  protection  of  a  neutral  flag.  At  "war 
panic  prices"  during  the  years  1861-65  there  were  sold 
to  foreign  buyers  751,595  tons  of  deep-sea  shipping,  or 
about  one-third  of  our  fleet  engaged  in  foreign  trade. 


86  THE  STORY   OF   OUR 

The  Confederate  cruisers  sunk  about  110,000  more. 
When  1866  came  in  we  had  but  1,387,756  tons  afloat,  and 
were  carrying  about  25.1  per  cent,  of  our  exports  and 
imports  as  compared  with  72.1  per  cent,  when  the  war 
began.* 

Natural  causes  cooperated  with  the  ravages  of  war 
to  cripple  the  American  merchant  marine  at  this  time. 
Steam  had  fairljt  established  its  place  as  the  controlling 
motive  power  in  ocean  navigation.  England  was  better 
equipped  for  the  building  of  engines,  and  vastly  more 
experienced  in  that  work.  Moreover,  iron  had  sup- 
planted wood  as  a  material  for  ships,  to  be  in  its  turn  sup- 
planted by  steel.  At  this  period  of  our  industrial  de- 
velopment we  lagged  far  behind  England  in  working  in 
metals.  Though  the  first  iron  ship  built  in  this  country, 
the  "Bangor,"  had  been  built  at  Wilmington,  Del.,  in 
1843  tnat  industry  had  made  no  progress.  England  had 
already  made  notable  progress  in  building  iron  ships, 
and  even  in  1860  thirty  per  cent,  of  her  merchant  ships 
were  built  of  that  metal,  while  America  was  building 
practically  none. 

American  wages  had  always  been  higher  than  those 
in  foreign  countries,  a  fact  which  placed  an  added  burden 
on  the  American  shipbuilder  in  competition  with  foreign 
yards.  American  sailors  demanded  and  received  higher 
pay.  This  fact  has  been  an  increasing  factor  in  the 
problem  of  maintaining  an  American  merchant  marine 
in  competition  with  the  world,  and  was  never  a  more 
serious  factor  than  it  is  to-day  (1919).  At  the  close  of 
the  Civil  War,  not  only  were  wages  in  this  country  higher 
than  ever  before,  but  new  opportunities  were  opened  for 
both  labor  and  capital,  diverting  both  from  maritime  en- 

*  A  full  account  of  the  work  of  the  Confederate  cruisers  will 
be  found  in  "The  Story  of  Our  Navy,"  by  Willis  J.  Abbot. 


MERCHANT  MARINE  87 

terprise  which  had  so  long  engaged  American  attention. 
Railroads  were  becoming  the  greatest  of  all  national  in- 
terests. The  development  of  the  Great  West  afforded  to 
hardy  and  pioneering  spirits  opportunities  much  like 
those  that  the  opening  of  the  world  to  American  trade 
Jjad  presented  a  few  decades  earlier.  New  Englanders 
who  would  have  devoted  their  brains  and  their  capital 
to  the  establishment  of  packet  lines  turned  to  building 
railroads,  and  adventurous  youth,  who,  in  the  first  half 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  would^  have  looked  upon  the 
quarter-deck  of  a  ship  as  the  goal  of  their  ambition,  now 
went  west  to  grow  up  with  the  country  and  become  its 
governors  and  senators. 

In  the  very  general  regret  over  the  decline  and  prac- 
tical obliteration  of  the  American  merchant  marine  there 
is  a  tendency  to  overlook  the  fact  that  the  ability,  enter- 
prise and  energy  withdrawn  from  maritime  adventure 
was  devoted  to  the  more  vital  undertaking  of  developing 
our  vast  interior  domain.  Perhaps  in  the  end  the  diver- 
sion of  energy  to  interior  development  may  have  been  the 
more  advantageous  to  the  United  States. 

Moreover  in  comparing  our  deep-sea  merchant  marine 
with  that  of  foreign  nations  we  must  bear  in  mind  the 
fact  that  all  their  maritime  commerce  is  necessarily  coast- 
ing or  foreign.  No  other  nation  has  a  commerce  upon 
interior  lakes  remotely  approaching  ours.  None  has  such 
a  record  of  prosperous  river  traffic  as  that  which  attended 
upon  the  development  of  the  interior  of  the  United  States. 
It  is  true  that  the  story  of  our  river  shipping,  like  that  of 
our  shipping  in  foreign  trade,  has  been  of  late  a  story 
of  dismal  decay.  That  has  been  due  to  conditions  fully 
set  forth  in  Chapter  VIII  of  this  volume.  But  the  rivers, 
great  free  highways  open  to  all,  are  still  there  and  hope 
is  general  among  thinking  people  that  the  "wisdom  of 


88  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

utilizing  them  at  least  for  barge  traffic,  as  in  Germany 
and  France,  will  yet  be  realized.  As  for  the  Great  Lakes, 
the  volume  of  traffic  upon  them  is  America's  greatest 
achievement  in  the  field  of  water  transportation  and  will 
be  fully  described  in  a  later  chapter. 


CHAPTER  III 

AN  UGLY  FEATURE  OF  EARLY  SEAFARING  —  THE  SLAVE  TRADE  AND 
ITS  PROMOTERS  —  PART  PLAYED  BY  EMINENT  NEW  ENGLANDERS 

—  How  THE  TRADE  GREW  UP  —  THE  PIOUS  AUSPICES  WHICH 
SURROUNDED  THE  TRAFFIC  —  SLAVE- STEALING  AND   SABBATH- 
BREAKING  —  CONDITIONS  OF  THE  TRADE  —  SIZE  OF  THE  VESSELS 

—  How    THE    CAPTIVES    WERE   TREATED  —  MUTINIES,    MAN- 
STEALING,  AND  MURDER  —  THE  REVELATIONS  OF  THE  ABOLITION 
SOCIETY  —  EFFORTS  TO  BREAK  UP  THE  TRADE  —  AN  AWFUL 
RETRIBUTION  —  ENGLAND   LEADS   THE   WAY  —  DIFFICULTY   OF 
ENFORCING  THE  LAW  —  AMERICA'S  SHAME  —  THE  END  OF  THE 
EVIL  —  THE  LAST  SLAVER. 

A  T  the  foot  of  Narragansett  Bay,  with  the  surges  of 
•*"**  the  open  ocean  breaking  fiercely  on  its  eastward 
side,  and  a  sheltered  harbor  crowded  with  trim  pleasure 
craft,  leading  up  to  its  rotting  wharves,  lies  the  old 
colonial  town  of  Newport.  A  holiday  place  it  is  to-day, 
a  spot  of  splendor  and  of  wealth  almost  without  parallel 
in  the  world.  From  the  rugged  cliffs  on  its  seaward  side 
great  granite  palaces  stare,  many-windowed,  over  the 
Atlantic,  and  velvet  lawns  slope  down  to  the  rocks.  These 
are  the  homes  of  the  people  who,  in  the  last  fifty  years, 
have  brought  new  life  and  new  riches  to  Newport.  But 
down  in  the  old  town  you  will  occasionally  come  across 
a  fine  old  colonial  mansion,  still  retaining  some  signs  of 
its  former  grandeur,  while  scattered  about  the  island  to 
the  north  are  stately  old  farmhouses  and  hornesteads  that 
show  clearly  enough  the  existence  in  that  quiet  spot  of 
wealth  and  comfort  for  these  one  hundred  and  fifty  years. 


go  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

Looking  upon  Newport  to-day,  and  finding  it  all  so 
fair,  it  seems  hard  to  believe  that  the  foundation  of  all  its 
wealth  and  prosperity  rested  upon  the  most  cruel,  the  most 
execrable,  the  most  inhuman  traffic  that  ever  was  plied 
by  degraded  men — the  traffic  in  slaves.  Yet  in  the  old 
days  the  trade  was  far  from  being  held  either  cruel  or 
inhuman — indeed,  vessels  often  set  sail  for  the  Bight  of 
Benin  to  swap  rum  for  slaves,  after  their  owners  had  in- 
voked the  blessing  of  God  upon  their  enterprise.  Nor 
were  its  promoters  held  by  the  community  to  be  degraded. 
Indeed,  some  of  the  most  eminent  men  in  the  community 
engaged  in  it,  and  its  receipts  were  so  considerable  that 
as  early  as  1729  one-half  of  the  impost  levied  on  slaves 
imported  into  the  colony  was  appropriated  to  pave  the 
streets  of  the  town  and  build  its  bridges — however,  we 
are  not  informed  that  the  streets  were  very  well  paved. 

It  was  not  at  Newport,  however,  nor  even  in  New 
England  that  the  importation  of  slaves  first  began,  though 
for  reasons  which  I  will  presently  show,  the  bulk  of  the 
traffic  in  them  fell  ultimately  to  New  Englanders.  The 
first  African  slaves  in  America  were  landed  by  a  Dutch 
vessel  at  Jamestown,  Virginia,  in  1619.  The  last  kid- 
napped Africans  were  brought  here  probably  some  time 
in  the  latter  part  of  1860 — for  though  the  traffic  was  pro- 
hibited in  1807,  the  rigorous  blockade  of  the  ports  of  the 
Confederacy  during  the  Civil  War  was  necessary  to  bring 
it  actually  to  an  end.  The  amount  of  human  misery 
which  that  frightful  traffic  entailed  during  those  240 
years  almost  baffles  the  imagination.  The  bloody  Civil 
War  which  had,  perhaps,  its  earliest  cause  in  the  landing 
of  those  twenty  blacks  at  Jamestown,  was  scarcely  more 
than  a  fitting  penalty,  and  there  was  justice  in  the  fact 
that  it  fell  on  North  and  South  alike,  for  if  the  South 
clung  longest  to  slavery,  it  was  the  North — even  abolition 


MERCHANT   MARINE  91 

New  England — which  had  most  to  do  with  establishing 
it  on  this  continent. 

However,  it  is  not  with  slavery,  but  with  the  slave 
trade  we  have  to  do.  Circumstances  largely  forced  upon 
the  New  England  colonies  their  unsavory  preeminence 
in  this  sort  of  commerce.  To  begin  with,  their  people 
were,  as  we  have  already  seen,  distinctively  the  seafaring 
folk  of  North  America.  Again,  one  of  their  earliest 
methods  of  earning  a  livelihood  was  in  the  fisheries,  and 
that,  curiously  enough,  led  directly  to  the  trade  in  slaves. 
To  sell  the  great  quantities  of  fish  they  dragged  up  from 
the  Hanks  or  nearer  home,  foreign  markets  must  needs 
be  found.  England  and  the  European  countries  took  but 
little  of  this  sort  of  provender,  and  moreover  England, 
France,  Holland,  and  Portugal  had  their  own  fishing  fleets 
on  the  Banks.  The  main  markets  for  the  New  England- 
ers  then  were  the  West  India  Islands,  the  Canaries,  and 
Madeira.  There  the  people  were  accustomed  to  a  fish 
diet  and,  indeed,  were  encouraged  in  it  by  the  frequent 
fastdays  of  the  Roman  Catholic  church,  of  which  most 
were  devout  members.  A  voyage  to  the  Canaries  with 
fish  was  commonly  prolonged  to  the  west  coast  of  Africa, 
where  slaves  were  bought  with  rum.  Thence  the  vessel 
would  proceed  to  the  West  Indies  where  the  slaves  would 
be  sold,  a  large  part  of  the  purchase  price  being  taken  in 
molasses,  which,  in  its  turn,  was  distilled  into  rum  at 
home,  to  be  used  for  buying  more  slaves — for  in  this 
traffic  little  of  actual  worth  was  paid  for  the  hapless 
captives.  Fiery  rum,  usually  .adulterated  and  more  than 
ever  poisonous,  was  all  the  African  chiefs  received  for 
their  droves  of  human  cattle.  For  it  they  sold  wives  and 
children,  made  bloody  war  and  sold  their  captives,  kid- 
napped and  sold  their  human  booty. 

Nothing  in  the  history  of  our  people  shows  so  strik- 


92  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

ingly  the  progress  of  man  toward  higher  ideals,  toward 
a  clearer  sense  of  the  duties  of  humanity  and  the  rightful 
relation  of  the  strong  toward  the  weak,  than  the  changed 
sentiment  concerning  the  slave  trade.  In  its  most  hu- 
mane form  the  thought  of  that  traffic  to-day  fills  us  with 
horror.  The  stories  of  its  worst  phases  seem  almost  in- 
credible, and  we  wonder  that  men  of  American  blood 
could  have  been  such  utter  brutes.  But  two  centuries 
ago  the  foremost  men  of  New  England  engaged  in  the 
trade  or  profited  by  its  fruits.  Peter  Fanueil,  who  built 
for  Boston  that  historic  hall  which  we  call  the  Cradle  of 
Liberty,  and  which  in  later  years  resounded  with  the 
anti-slavery  eloquence  of  Garrison  and  Phillips,  was  a 
slave  owner  and  an  actual  participant  in  the  trade.  The 
most  "respectable"  merchants  of  Providence  and  New- 
port were  active  slavers — just  as  some  of  the  most  re- 
spectable merchants  and  manufacturers  of  to-day  make 
merchandise  of  white  men,  women,  and  children,  whose 
slavery  is  none  the  less  slavery  because  they  are  driven  by 
the  fear  of  starvation  instead  of  the  overseer's  lash.  Per- 
haps two  hundred  years  from  now  our  descendants  will  see 
the  criminality  of  our  industrial  system  to-day,  as  clearly 
as  we  see  the  wrong  in  that  of  our  forefathers.  The  utmost 
piety  was  observed  in  setting  out  a  slave-buying  expedi- 
tion. The  commissions  were  issued  "by  the  Grace  of 
God,"  divine  guidance  was  implored  for  the  captain  who 
was  to  swap  fiery  rum  for  stolen  children,  and  prayers 
were  not  infrequently  offered  for  long  delayed  or  missing 
slavers.  George  Dowing,  a  Massachusetts  clergyman, 
wrote  of  slavery  in  Barbadoes:  "I  believe  they  have 
bought  this  year  no  less  than  a  thousand  negroes,  and  the 
more  they  buie,  the  better  able  they  are  to  buie,  for  in  a 
year  and  a  half  they  will  earne  with  God's  blessing,  as 
much  as  they  cost."  Most  of  the  slaves  brought  from 


MERCHANT  MARINE  93 

the  coast  of  Guinea  in  New  England  vessels  were  de- 
ported again — sent  to  the  southern  States  or  to  the  West 
Indies  for  a  market.  The  climate  and  the  industrial  con- 
ditions of  New  England  were  alike  unfavorable  to  the 
growth  there  of  slavery,  and  its  ports  served  chiefly  as 
clearing-houses  for  the  trade.  Yet  there  was  not  even 
among  the  most  enlightened  and  leading  people  of  the 
colony  any  moral  sentiment  against  slavery,  and  from 
Boston  to  New  York  slaves  were  held  in  small  numbers 
and  their  prices  quoted  in  the  shipping  lists  and  news- 
papers like  any  other  merchandise.  Curiously  enough, 
the  first  African  slaves  brought  to  Boston  were  sent  home 
again  and  their  captors  prosecuted — not  wholly  for  steal- 
ing men,  but  for  breaking  the  Sabbath.  It  happened  in 
this  way :  A  Boston  ship,  the  "Rainbow,"  in  1645,  making 
the  usual  voyage  to  Madeira  with  staves  and  salt  fish, 
touched  on  the  coast  of  Guinea  for  a  few  slaves.  Her 
captain  found  the  English  slavers  on  the  ground  already, 
mightily  discontented,  for  the  trade  was  dull.  It  was 
still  the  time  when  there  was  a  pretense  of  legality  about 
the  method  of  procuring  the  slaves ;  they  were  supposed 
to  be  malefactors  convicted  of  crime,  or  at  the  very  least, 
prisoners  taken  by  some  native  king  in  war.  In  later 
years  the  native  kings,  animated  by  an  ever-growing  thirst 
for  the  white  man's  rum,  declared  war  in  order  to  secure 
captives,  and  employed  decoys  to  lure  young  men  into 
the  commission  of  crime.  These  devices  for  keeping  the 
man-market  fully  supplied  had  not  at  this  time  been  in- 
vented, and  the  captains  of  the  slavers,  lying  oft*  a  danger- 
ous coast  in  the  boiling  heat  of  a  tropical  country,  grew 
restive  at  the  long  delay.  Perhaps  some  of  the  rum  they 
had  brought  to  trade  for  slaves  inflamed  their  own  blood. 
At  any  rate,  dragging  ashore  a  small  cannon  called  sig- 
nificantly enough  a  "murderer,"  they  attacked  a  village, 


94  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

killed  many  of  its  people,  and  brought  off  a  number  of 
blacks,  two  of  whom  fell  to  the  lot  of  the  captain  of  the 
"Rainbow,"  and  were  by  him  taken  to  Boston.  He  found 
no  profit,  however,  in  his  piratical  venture,  for  the  story 
coming  out,  he  was  accused  in  court  of  "murder,  man- 
stealing,  and  Sabbath-breaking,"  and  his  slaves  were 
sent  home.  It  was  wholly  as  merchandise  that  the  blacks 
were  regarded.  It  is  impossible  to  believe  that  the  bru- 
talities of  the  traffic  could  have  been  tolerated  so  long, 
had  the  idea  of  the  essential  humanity  of  the  Africans 
been  grasped  by  those  who  dealt  in  them.  Instead,  they 
were  looked  upon  as  a  superior  sort  of  cattle,  but  on  the 
long  voyage  across  the  Atlantic  were  treated  as  no  cattle 
are  treated  to-day  in  the  worst  "ocean  tramps"  in  the 
trade.  The  vessels  were  small,  many  of  them  half  the 
size  of  the  lighters  that  ply  sluggishly  up  and  down  New 
York  harbor.  Sloops,  schooners,  brigantines,  and  scows 
of  40  or  50  tons  burden,  carrying  crews  of  nine  men  in- 
cluding the  captain  and  mates,  were  the  customary  craft 
in  the  early  days  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

In  his  work  on  "The  American  Slave-Trade, "  Mr. 
John  R.  Spears  gives  the  dimensions  of  some  of  these 
puny  vessels  which  were  so  heavily  freighted  with  human 
woe.  The  first  American  slaver  of  which  we  have  record 
was  the  "Desire,"  of  Marblehead,  120  tons.  Later  vessels, 
however,  were  much  smaller.  The  sloop,  "Welcome," 
had  a  capacity  of  5000  gallons  of  molasses.  The  "Fame" 
was  79  feet  long  on  the  keel — about  a  large  yacht's  length. 
In  1847,  some  of  the  captured  slavers  had  dimensions  like 
these:  The  "Felicidade"  67  tons;  the  "Maria"  30  tons; 
the  "Rio  Bango"  10  tons.  When  the  trade  was  legal 
and  regulated  by  law,  the  "Maria"  would  have  been  per- 
mitted to  carry  45  slaves — or  one  and  one-half  to  each 
ton  register.  In  1847,  the  trade  being  outlawed,  no  regu- 


MERCHANT  MARINE 


95 


lations  were  observed,  and  this  wretched  little  craft  im- 
prisoned 237  negroes.  But  even  this  lo-ton  slaver  was 
not  the  limit.  Mr.  Spears  finds  that  open  rowboats, 
no  more  than  24  feet  long  by  7  wide,  landed  as  many  as 
35  children  in  Brazil  out  of  say  50  with  which  the  voyage 


'A  FAVORITE  TRICK  OF  THE  FLEEING  SLAVER  WAS  TO 
THROW  OVER  8LAVE8" 


began.  But  the  size  of  the  vessels  made  little  difference 
in  the  comfort  of  the  slaves.  Greed  packed  the  great 
ones  equally  with  the  small.  The  blacks,  stowed  in  rows 
between  decks,  the  roof  barely  3  feet  10  inches  above  the 
floor  on  which  they  lay  side  by  side,  sometimes  in  "spoon- 


96  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

fashion"  with  from  10  to  16  inches  surface-room  for  each, 
endured  months  of  imprisonment.  Often  they  were 
so  packed  that  the  head  of  one  slave  would  be  between 
the  thighs  of  another,  and  in  this  condition  they  would 
pass  the  long  weeks  which  the  Atlantic  passage  under 
sail  consumed.  This,  too,  when  the  legality  of  the  slave 
trade  was  recognized,  and  nothing  but  the  dictates  of 
greed  led  to  overcrowding.  Time  came  when  the  trade 
was  put  under  the  ban  of  law  and  made  akin  to  piracy. 
Then  the  need  for  fast  vessels  restricted  hold  room, 
and  the  methods  of  the  trade  attained  a  degree  of  bar- 
barity that  can  not  be  paralleled  since  the  days  of  Nero. 

Shackled  together  "spoon-wise,"  as  the  phrase  was, 
they  suffered  and  sweltered  through  the  long  middle 
passage,  dying  by  scores,  so  that  often  a  fifth  of  the  cargo 
perished  during  the  voyage.  The  stories  of  those  who  took 
part  in  the  effort  to  suppress  the  traffic  give  some  idea 
of  its  frightful  cruelty. 

The  Rev.  Pascoa  Grenfell  Hill,  a  chaplain  in  the 
British  navy,  once  made  a  short  voyage  on  a  slaver  which 
his  ship,  the  "Cleopatra,"  had  captured.  The  vessel  had 
a  full  cargo,  and  when  the  capture  was  effected,  the 
negroes  were  all  brought  on  deck  for  exercise  and  fresh 
air.  The  poor  creatures  quite  understood  the  meaning 
of  the  sudden  change  in  their  masters,  and  kissed  the 
hands  and  clothing  of  their  deliverers.  The  ship  was 
headed  for  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  where  the  slaves 
were  to  be  liberated;  but  a  squall  coming  on,  all  were 
ordered  below  again.  "The  night,"  enters  Mr.  Hill  in 
his  journal,  "being  intensely  hot,  four  hundred  wretched 
beings  thus  crammed  into  a  hold  twelve  yards  in  length, 
seven  feet  in  breadth,  and  only  three  and  one-half  feet  in 
height,  speedily  began  to  make  an  effort  to  reissue  to  the 
open  air.  Being  thrust  back  and  striving  the  more  to  get 


MERCHANT   MARINE  97 

out,  the  afterhatch  was  forced  down  upon  them.  Over  the 
other  hatchway,  in  the  fore  part  of  the  vessel,  a  wooden 
grating  was  fastened.  To  this,  the  sole  inlet  for  the  air, 
the  suffocating  heat  of  the  hold  and,  perhaps,  panic  from 
the  strangeness  of  their  situation,  made  them  flock,  and 
thus  a  great  part  of  the  space  below  was  rendered  useless. 
They  crowded  to  the  grating  and  clinging  to  it  for  air, 
completely  barred  its  entrance.  They  strove  to  force 
their  way  through  apertures  in  length  fourteen  inches  and 
barely  six  inches  in  breadth,  and  in  some  instances  suc- 
ceeded. The  cries,  the  heat,  I  may  say  without  exag- 
geration, the  smoke  of  their  torme'nt  which  ascended  can 
be  compared  to  nothing  earthly.  One  of  the  Spaniards 
gave  warning  that  the  consequences  would  be  'many 
deaths;'  this  prediction  was  fearfully  verified,  for  the 
next  morning  54  crushed  and  mangled  corpses  were 
brought  to  the  gangway  and  thrown  overboard.  Some 
were  emaciated  from  disease,  many  bruised  and  bloody. 
Antoine  tells  me  that  some  were  found  strangled;  their 
hands  still  grasping  each  others'  throats." 

It  is  of  a  Brazilian  slaver  that  this  awful  tale  is  told, 
but  the  event  itself  was  paralleled  on  more  than  one 
American  ship.  Occasionally  we  encounter  stories  of 
ships  destroyed  by  an  exploding  magazine,  and  the  slaves, 
chained  to  the  deck,  going  down  with  the  wreck.  Once 
a  slaver  went  ashore  off  Jamaica,  and  the  officers  and 
crew  speedily  got  out  the  boats  and  made  for  the  beach, 
leaving  the  human  cargo  to  perish.  When  dawn  broke 
it  was  seen  that  the  slaves  had  rid  themselves  of  their 
fetters  and  were  busily  making  rafts  on  which  the  women 
and  children  were  put,  while  the  men,  plunging  into  the 
sea,  swam  alongside,  and  guided  the  rafts  toward  the 
shore.  Now  mark  what  the  white  man,  the  supposed  rep- 
resentative of  civilization  and  Christianity,  did.  Fearing 


g8  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

that  the  negroes  would  exhaust  the  store  of  provisions 
and  water  that  had  been  landed,  they  resolved  to  destroy 
them  while  still  in  the  water.  As  soon  as  the  rafts  came 
within  range,  those  on  shore  opened  fire  with  rifles  and 
muskets  with  such  deadly  effect  that  between  three  hun- 
dred and  four  hundred  blacks  were  murdered.  Only 
thirty- four  saved  themselves — and  for  what?  A  few 
weeks  later  they  were  sold  in  the  slave  mart  at  Kingston. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  trade,  the  captains  dealt  with 
recognized  chiefs  along  the  coast  of  Guinea,  who  con- 
ducted marauding  expeditions  into  the  interior  to  kidnap 
slaves.  Rum  was  the  purchase  price,  and  by  skillful  dilu- 
tion, a  competent  captain  was  able  to  double  the  purchas- 
ing value  of  his  cargo.  The  trade  was  not  one  calculated 
to  develop  the  highest  qualities  of  honor,  and  to  swindling 
the  captains  usually  added  theft  and  murder.  Any  negro 
who  came  near  the  ship  to  trade,  or  through  motives  of 
curiosity,  was  promptly  seized  and  thrust  below.  Dealers 
who  came  on  board  with  kidnapped  negroes  were  them- 
selves kidnapped  after  the  bargain  was  made.  Never 
was  there  any  inquiry  into  the  title  of  the  seller.  Any 
slave  offered  was  bought,  though  the  seller  had  no  right — 
even  under  legalized  slavery — to  sell. 

A  picturesque  story  was  told  in  testimony  before  the 
English  House  of  Commons.  To  a  certain  slaver  lying 
off  the  Windward  coast  a  girl  was  brought  in  a  canoe  by 
a  well-known  black  trader,  who  took  his  pay  and  paddled 
off.  A  few  moments  later  another  canoe  with  two  blacks 
came  alongside  and  inquired  for  the  girl.  They  were 
permitted  to  see  her  and  declared  she  had  been  kid- 
napped; but  the  slaver,  not  at  all  put  out  by  that  fact, 
refused  to  give  her  up.  Thereupon  the  blacks  paddled 
swiftly  off  after  her  seller,  overtook,  and  captured  him. 
Presently  they  brought  him  back  to  the  deck  of  the  ship — 


DEALERS    WHO    CAME    ON    BOARD    WERE    THEMSELVES    KIDNAPPED. 


MERCHANT   MARINE  99 

an  article  of  merchandise,  where  he  had  shortly  before 
been  a  merchant. 

"You  won't  buy  me,"  cried  the  captive.  "I  a  grand 
trading  man !  I  bring  you  slaves." 

But  no  scruples  entered  the  mind  of  the  captain  of 
the  slaver.  "If  they  will  sell  you  I  certainly  will  buy 
you,"  he  answered,  and  soon  the  kidnapped  kidnapper 
was  in  irons  and  thrust  below  in  the  noisome  hold  with 
the  unhappy  being  he  had  sent  there.  A  multitude  of 
cases  of  negro  slave-dealers  being  seized  in  this  way,  after 
disposing  of  their  human  cattle,  are  recorded. 

It  is  small  wonder  that  torn  thus  from  home  and  rela- 
tives, immured  in  filthy  and  crowded  holds,  ill  fed,  denied 
the  two  great  gifts  of  God  to  man — air  and  water — sub- 
jected to  the  brutality  of  merciless  men,  and  wholly  ig- 
norant of  the  fate  in  store  for  them,  many  of  the  slaves 
should  kill  themselves.  As  they  had  a  salable  value  the 
captains  employed  every  possible  device  to  defeat  this 
end — every  device,  that  is,  except  kind  treatment,  which 
was  beyond  the  comprehension  of  the  average  slaver. 
Sometimes  the  slaves  would  try  to  starve  themselves  to 
death.  This  the  captains  met  by  torture  with  the  cat  and 
thumbscrews.  There  is  a  horrible  story  in  the  testimony 
before  the  English  House  of  Commons  about  a  captain 
who  actually  whipped  a  nine-months-old  child  to  death 
trying  to  force  it  to  eat,  and  then  brutally  compelled  the 
mother  to  throw  the  lacerated  little  body  overboard.  An- 
other captain  found  that  his  captives  were  killing  them- 
selves, in  the  belief  that  their  spirits  would  return  to  their 
old  home.  By  way  of  meeting  this  superstition,  he  an- 
nounced that  all  who  died  in  this  way  should  have  their 
heads  cut  off,  so  that  if  they  did  return  to  their  African 
homes,  it  would  be  as  headless  spirits.  The  outcome  of 
this  threat  was  very  different  from  what  the  captain  had 


ioo  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

anticipated.  When  a  number  of  the  slaves  were  brought 
on  deck  to  witness  the  beheading  of  the  body  of  one  of 
their  comrades,  they  seized  the  occasion  to  leap  over- 
board and  were  drowned.  Many  sought  death  in  this 
way,  and  as  they  were  usually  good  swimmers,  they 
actually  forced  themselves  to  drown,  some  persistently 
holding  their  heads  under  water,  others  raising  their 
arms  high  above  their  heads,  and  in  one  case  two  who 
died  together  clung  to  each  other  so  that  neither  could 
swim.  Every  imaginable  way  in  which  death  could  be 
sought  was  employed  by  these  hopeless  blacks,  though, 
indeed,  the  hardships  of  the  voyage  were  such  as  to 
bring  it  often  enough  unsought. 

When  the  ship's  hold  was  full  the  voyage  was  begun, 
while  from  the  suffering  blacks  below,  unused  to  sea^ 
faring  under  any  circumstances,  and  desperately  sick  in 
their  stifling  quarters,  there  arose  cries  and  moans  as  if 
the  cover  were  taken  off  of  purgatory.  The  imagination 
recoils  from  the  thought  of  so  much  human  wretchedness. 

The  publications  of  some  of  the  early  anti-slavery 
associations  tell  of  the  inhuman  conditions  of  the  trade. 
In  an  unusually  commodious  ship  carrying  over  six  hun- 
dred slaves,  we  are  told  that  "platforms,  or  wide  shelves, 
were  erected  between  the  decks,  extending  so  far  from  the 
side  toward  the  middle  of  the  vessel  as  to  be  capable  of 
containing  four  additional  rows  of  slaves,  by  which  means 
the  perpendicular  height  between  each  tier  was,  after  al- 
lowing for  the  beams  and  platforms,  reduced  to  three 
feet,  six  inches,  so  that  they  could  not  even  sit  in  an  erect 
posture,  besides  which  in  the  men's  apartment,  instead  of 
four  rows,  five  were  stowed  by  putting  the  head  of  one 
between  the  thighs  of  another."  In  another  ship,  "In  the 
men's  apartment  the  space  allowed  to  each  is  six  feet  in 
length  by  sixteen  inches  in  breadth,  the  boys  are  each  al- 


MERCHANT   MARINE  101 

lowed  five  feet  by  fourteen  inches,  the  women  five  feet, 
ten  by  sixteen  inches,  and  the  girls  four  feet  by  one  foot 
each." 

"A  man  in  his  coffin  has  more  room  than  one  of  these 
blacks,"  is  the  terse  way  in  which  witness  after  witness 
before  the  British  House  of  Commons  described  the  mis- 
erable condition  of  the  slaves  on  shipboard. 

An  amazing  feature  of  this  detestable  traffic  is  the 
smallness  and  often  the  unseaworthiness  of  the  vessels 
in  which  it  was  carried  on.  Few  such  picayune  craft 
now  venture  outside  the  landlocked  waters  of  Long 
Island  Sound,  or  beyond  the  capes  of  the  Delaware  and 
Chesapeake.  In  the  early  days  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury hardy  mariners  put  out  in  little  craft,  the  size  of  a 
Hudson  River  brick-sloop  or  a  harbor  lighter,  and  made 
the  long  voyage  to  the  Canaries  and  the  African  West 
Coast,  withstood  the  perils  of  a  prolonged  anchorage  on  a 
dangerous  shore,  went  thence  heavy  laden  with  slaves  to 
the  West  Indies,  and  so  home.  To  cross  the  Atlantic  was 
a  matter  of  eight  or  ten  weeks ;  the  whole  voyage  would 
commonly  take  five  or  six  months.  Nor  did  the  vessels 
always  make  up  in  stanchness  for  their  diminutive  pro- 
portions. Almost  any  weather-beaten  old  hulk  was 
thought  good  enough  for  a  slaver.  Captain  Linsday,  of 
Newport,  who  wrote  home  from  Aumboe,  said :  "I  should 
be  glad  I  cood  come  rite  home  with  my  slaves,  for  my 
vessel  will  not  last  to  proceed  far.  We  can  see  daylight 
all  round  her  bow  under  deck."  But  he  was  not  in  any 
unusual  plight.  And  not  only  the  perils  of  the  deep  had 
to  be  encountered,  but  other  perils,  some  bred  of  man's 
savagery,  then  more  freely  exhibited  than  now,  others 
necessary  to  the  execrable  traffic  in  peaceful  blacks.  It 
was  a  time  of  constant  wars  and  the  seas  swarmed  with 
French  privateers  alert  for  fat  prizes.  When  a  slaver 


102  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

met  a  privateer  the  battle  was  sure  to  be  a  bloody  one, 
for  on  either  side  fought  desperate  men — one  party  fol- 
lowing as  a  trade  legalized  piracy  and  violent  theft  of 
cargoes,  the  other  employed  in  the  violent  theft  of  men 
and  women,  and  the  incitement  of  murder  and  rapine  that 
their  cargoes  might  be  the  fuller.  There  would  have 
been  but  scant  loss  to  mankind  in  most  of  these  conflicts 
had  privateer  and  slaver  both  gone  to  the  bottom.  Not 
infrequently  the  slavers  themselves  turned  pirate  or  pri- 
vateer for  the  time — sometimes  robbing  a  smaller  craft 
of  its  load  of  slaves,  sometimes  actually  running  up  the 
black  flag  and  turning  to  piracy  for  a  permanent  calling. 
In  addition  to  the  ordinary  risks  of  shipwreck  or  cap- 
ture the  slavers  encountered  perils  peculiar  to  their  call- 
ing. Once  in  a  while  the  slaves  would  mutiny,  though 
such  is  the  gentle  and  almost  childlike  nature  of  the 
African  negro  that  this  seldom  occurred.  The  fear  of 
it,  however,  was  ever  present  to  the  captains  engaged  in 
the  trade,  and  to  guard  against  it  the  slaves — always  the 
men  and  sometimes  the  women  as  well — were  shackled 
together  in  pairs.  Sometimes  they  were  even  fastened 
to  the  floor  of  the  dark  and  stifling  hold  in  which  they 
were  immured  for  months  at  a  time.  If  heavy  weather 
compelled  the  closing  of  the  hatches,  or  if  disease  set  in, 
as  it  too  often  did,  the  morning  would  find  the  living 
shackled  to  the  dead.  In  brief,  to  guard  against  insur- 
rection the  captains  made  the  conditions  of  life  so  cruel 
that  the  slaves  were  fairly  forced  to  revolt.  In  1759  a 
case  of  an  uprising  that  was  happily  successful  was  re- 
corded. The  slaver  "Perfect,"  Captain  Potter,  lay  at 
anchor  at  Mana  with  one  hundred  slaves  aboard.  The 
mate,  second  mate,  the  boatswain,  and  about  half  the 
crew  were  sent  into  the  interior  to  buy  some  more  slaves. 
Noticing  the  reduced  numbers  of  their  jailors,  the  slaves 


MERCHANT   MARINE  103 

determined  to  rise.  Ridding  themselves  of  their  irons, 
they  crowded  to  the  deck,  and,  all  unarmed  as  they  were, 
killed  the  captain,  the  surgeon,  the  carpenter,  the  cooper, 
and  a  cabin-boy.  Whereupon  the  remainder  of  the  crew 
took  to  the  boats  and  boarded  a  neighboring  slaver,  the 
"Spencer."  The  captain  of  this  craft  prudently  declined 
to  board  the  "Perfect,"  and  reduce  the  slaves  to  subjection 


THE  ROPE  WAS  PUT  AROUND  HIS  NECK 


again;  but  he  had  no  objection  to  slaughtering  naked 
blacks  at  long  range,  so  he  warped  his  craft  into  position 
and  opened  fire  with  his  guns.  For  about  an  hour  this 
butchery  was  continued,  and  then  such  of  the  slaves  as 
still  lived,  ran  the  schooner  ashore,  plundered,  and 
burnt  her. 

How   such   insurrections   were   put   down   was   told 
nearly  a  hundred  years  later  in  an  official  communication 


104  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

to  Secretary  of  State  James  Buchanan,  by  United  States 
Consul  George  W.  Gordon,  the  story  being  sworn  testi- 
mony before  him.  The  case  was  that  of  the  slaver  "Ken- 
tucky," which  carried  530  slaves.  An  insurrection  which 
broke  out  was  speedily  suppressed,  but  fearing  lest  the 
outbreak  should  be  repeated,  the  captain  determined  to 
give  the  wretched  captives  an  "object  lesson"  by  punish- 
ing the  ringleaders.  This  is  how  he  did  it : 

"They  were  ironed,  or  chained,  two  together,  and 
when  they  were  hung,  a  rope  was  put  around  their  necks 
and  they  were  drawn  up  to  the  yard-arm  clear  of  the  sail. 
This  did  not  kill  them,  but  only  choked  or  strangled  them. 
They  were  then  shot  in  the  breast  and  the  bodies  thrown 
overboard.  If  only  one  of  two  that  were  ironed  together 
was  to  be  hung,  the  rope  was  put  around  his  neck  and  he 
was  drawn  up  clear  of  the  deck,  and  his  leg  laid  across 
the  rail  and  chopped  off  to  save  the  irons  and  release  him 
from  his  companion,  who  at  the  same  time  lifted  up  his 
leg  until  the  other  was  chopped  off  as  aforesaid,  and  he 
released.  The  bleeding  negro  was  then  drawn  up,  shot 
in  the  breast  and  thrown  overboard.  The  legs  of  about 
one  dozen  were  chopped  off  this  way. 

"When  the  feet  fell  on  the  deck  they  were  picked  up 
by  the  crew  and  thrown  overboard,  and  sometimes  they 
shot  at  the  body  while  it  still  hung,  living,  and  all  sorts 
of  sport  was  made  of  the  business." 

Forty-six  men  and  one  woman  were  thus  done  to 
death:  "When  the  woman  was  hung  up  and  shot,  the 
ball  did  not  take  effect,  and  she  was  thrown  overboard 
living,  and  was  seen  to  struggle  some  time  in  the  water 
before  she  sunk ;"  and  deponent  further  says,  "that  after 
this  was  over,  they  brought  up  and  flogged  about  twenty 
men  and  six  women.  The  flesh  of  some  of  them  where 
they  were  flogged  putrified,  and  came  off,  in  some  cases, 


MERCHANT  MARINE  105 

six  or  eight  inches  in  diameter,  and  in  places  half  an  inch 
thick." 

This  was  in  1839,  a  time  when  Americans  were  very 
sure  that  for  civilization,  progress,  humanity,  and  the 
Christian  virtues,  they  were  at  least  on  as  high  a  plane 
as  the  most  exalted  peoples  of  the  earth. 

Infectious  disease  was  one  of  the  grave  perils  with 
which  the  slavers  had  to  reckon.  The  overcrowding  of 
the  slaves,  the  lack  of  exercise  and  fresh  air,  the  wretched 
and  insufficient  food,  all  combined  to  make  grave,  general 
sickness  an  incident  of  almost  every  voyage,  and  actual 
epidemics  not  infrequent.  This  was  a  peril  that  moved 
even  the  callous  captains  and  their  crews,  for  scurvy  or 
yellow- jack  developing  in  the  hold  was  apt  to  sweep  the 
decks  clear  as  well.  A  most  gruesome  story  appears  in 
all  the  books  on  the  slave  trade,  of  the  experience  of  the 
French  slaver,  "Rodeur."  With  a  cargo  of  165  slaves, 
she  was  on  the  way  to  Guadaloupe  in  1819,  when  opthal- 
mia — a  virulent  disease  of  the  eyes — appeared  among 
the  blacks.  It  spread  rapidly,  though  the  captain,  in 
hopes  of  checking  its  ravages,  threw  thirty-six  negroes 
into  the  sea  alive.  Finally  it  attacked  the  crew,  and  in 
a  short  time  all  save  one  man  became  totally  blind.  Grop- 
ing in  the  dark,  the  helpless  sailors  made  shift  to  handle 
the  ropes,  while  the  one  man  still  having  eyesight  clung 
to  the  wheel.  For  days,  in  this  wretched  state,  they  made 
their  slow  way  along  the  deep,  helpless  and  hopeless.  At 
last  a  sail  was  sighted.  The  "Rodeur's"  prow  is  turned 
toward  it,  for  there  is  hope,  there  rescue !  As  the  stranger 
draws  nearer,  the  straining  eyes  of  the  French  helmsman 
discerns  something  strange  and  terrifying  about  her 
appearance.  Her  rigging  is  loose  and  slovenly,  her 
course  erratic,  she  seems  to  be  idly  drifting,  and  there  is 
no  one  at  the  wheel.  A  derelict,  abandoned  at  sea,  she 


106  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

mocks  their  hopes  of  rescue.  But  she  is  not  entirely  de- 
serted, for  a  faint  shout  comes  across  the  narrowing  strip 
of  sea  and  is  answered  from  the  "Rodeur."  The  two 
vessels  draw  near.  There  can  be  no  launching  of  boats 
by  blind  men,  but  the  story  of  the  stranger  is  soon  told. 
She,  too,  is  a  slaver,  a  Spaniard,  the  "Leon,"  and  on  her, 
too,  every  soul  is  blind  from  opthalmia  originating  among 
the  slaves.  Not  even  a  steersman  has  the  "Leon."  All 
light  has  gone  out  from  her,  and  the  "Rodeur"  sheers 
away,  leaving  her  to  an  unknown  fate,  for  never  again  is 
she  heard  from.  How  wonderful  the  fate — or  the  Provi- 
dence— that  directed  that  upon  all  the  broad  ocean  teem- 
ing with  ships,  engaged  in  honest  or  in  criminal  trade, 
the  two  that  should  meet  must  be  the  two  on  which  the 
hand  of  God  was  laid  most  heavily  in  retribution  for  the 
suffering  and  the  woe  which  white  men  and  professed 
Christians  were  bringing  to  the  peaceful  and  innocent 
blacks  of  Africa. 

It  will  be  readily  understood  that  the  special  and  al- 
ways menacing  dangers  attending  the  slave  trade  made 
marine  insurance  upon  that  sort  of  cargoes  exceedingly 
high.  Twenty  pounds  in  the  hundred  was  the  usual 
figure  in  the  early  days.  This  heavy  insurance  led  to  a 
new  form  of  wholesale  murder  committed  by  the  captains. 
The  policies  covered  losses  resulting  from  jettisoning, 
or  throwing  overboard  the  cargo;  they  did  not  insure 
against  loss  from  disease.  Accordingly,  when  a  slaver 
found  his  cargo  infected,  he  would  promptly  throw  into 
the  sea  all  the  ailing  negroes,  while  still  alive,  in  order 
to  save  the  insurance.  Some  of  the  South  American 
states,  where  slaves  were  bought,  levied  an  import  duty 
upon  blacks,  and  cases  are  on  record  of  captains  going 
over  their  cargo  outside  the  harbor  and  throwing  into  the 


MERCHANT   MARINE  107 

sea  all  who  by  disease  or  for  other  causes,  were  rendered 
unsalable — thus  saving  both  duty  and  insurance. 

In  the  clearer  light  which  illumines  the  subject  to- 
day, the  prolonged  difficulty  which  attended  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  slave  trade  seems  incredible.  It  appears  that 
two  such  powerful  maritime  nations  as  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States  had  only  to  decree  the  trade  criminal 
and  it  would  be  abandoned.  But  we  must  remember  that 
slaves  were  universally  regarded  as  property,  and  an  at- 
tempt to  interfere  with  the  right  of  their  owners  to  carry 
them  where  they  would  on  the  high  seas  was  denounced  as 
an  interference  with  property  rights.  We  see  that  even  to- 
day men  are  very  tenacious  of  "property  rights,"  and 
the  law  describes  them  as  sacred — however  immoral  or 
repugnant  to  common  sense  and  common  humanity  they 
may  be.  So  the  effort  to  abolish  the  "right"  of  a  slaver 
to  starve,  suffocate,  mutilate,  torture,  or  murder  a  black 
man  in  whom  he  had  acquired  a  property  right  by  the 
simple  process  of  kidnapping  required  more  than  half 
a  century  to  attain  complete  success. 

The  first  serious  blow  to  the  slave-trade  fell  in  1772, 
when  an  English  court  declared  that  any  slave  coming 
into  England  straightway  became  free.  That  closed  all 
English  ports  to  the  slavers.  Two  years  after  the  Ameri- 
can colonists,  then  on  the  threshold  of  the  revolt  against 
Great  Britain,  thought  to  put  America  on  a  like  high 
plane,  and  formally  resolved  that  they  would  "not  pur- 
chase any  slave  imported  after  the  first  day  of  December 
next;  after  which  time,  we  will  wholly  discontinue  the 
slave-trade,  and  will  neither  be  concerned  in  it  ourselves, 
nor  will  we  hire  our  vessels,  nor  sell  our  commodities 
or  manufactures  to  those  who  are  concerned  in  it."  But 
to  this  praiseworthy  determination  the  colonists  were 
unable  to  live  up,  and  in  1776,  when  Jefferson  proposed 


io8  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

to  put  into  the  Declaration  of  Independence  the  charge 
that  the  British  King  had  forced  the  slave-trade  on  the 
colonies,  a  proper  sense  of  their  own  guilt  made  the  dele- 
gates oppose  it. 

It  was  in  England  that  the  first  earnest  effort  to  break 
up  the  slave-trade  began.  It  was  under  the  Stars  and 
Stripes  that  the  slavers  longest  protected  their  murderous 
traffic.  For  a  time  the  effort  of  the  British  humanitarians 
was  confined  to  the  amelioration  of  the  conditions  of  the 
trade,  prescribing  space  to  be  given  each  slave,  prescribing 
surgeons,  and  offering  bounties  to  be  paid  captains  who 
lost  less  than  two  per  cent,  of  their  cargoes  on  the  voyage. 
It  is  not  recorded  that  the  bounty  was  often  claimed.  On 
the  contrary,  the  horrors  of  what  was  called  "the  middle 
passage"  grew  with  the  greed  of  the  slave  captains.  But 
the  revelations  of  inhumanity  made  during  the  parlia- 
mentary investigation  were  too  shocking  for  even  the 
indifferent  and  callous  public  sentiment  of  that  day.  Hu- 
mane people  saw  at  once  that  to  attempt  to  regulate  a 
traffic  so  abhorrent  to  every  sense  of  humanity,  was  for 
the  nation  to  go  into  partnership  with  murderers  and 
manstealers,  and  so  the  demand  for  the  absolute  prohi- 
bition of  the  traffic  gained  strength  from  the  futile  attempt 
to  regulate  it.  Bills  for  its  abolition  failed,  now  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  then  in  the  House  of  Commons ;  but  in 
1807  a  law  prohibiting  all  participation  in  the  trade  by 
British  ships  or  subjects  was  passed.  The  United  States 
moved  very  slowly.  Individual  States  under  the  old 
confederation  prohibited  slavery  within  their  borders, 
and  in  some  cases  the  slave  trade ;  but  when  our  fore- 
fathers came  together  to  form  that  Constitution  under 
which  the  nation  still  exists,  the  opposition  of  certain 
Southern  States  was  so  vigorous  that  the  best  which  could 
be  done  was  to  authorize  a  tax  on  slaves  of  not  more  than 


MERCHANT   MARINE  109 

ten  dollars  a  head,  and  to  provide  that  the  traffic  should 
not  be  prohibited  before  1808.  But  there  followed  a  series 
of  acts  which  corrected  the  seeming  failure  of  the  consti- 
tutional convention.  One  prohibited  American  citizens 
' 'carry ing  on  the  slave  trade  from  the  United  States  to 
any  foreign  place  or  country."  Another  forbade  the  in- 
troduction of  slaves  into  the  Mississippi  Territory  Others 
made  it  unlawful  to  carry  slaves  to  States  which  pro- 
hibited the  traffic,  or  to  fit  out  ships  for  the  foreign  slave 
trade,  or  to  serve  on  a  slaver.  The  discussion  caused  by 
all  these  measures  did  much  to  build  up  a  healthy  public 
sentiment,  and  when  1808 — the  date  set  by  the  Constitu- 
tion— came  round,  a  prohibitory  law  was  passed,  and  the 
President  was  authorized  to  use  the  armed  vessels  of  the 
United  States  to  give  it  force  and  effect.  Notwithstand- 
ing this,  however,  the  slave  trade,  though  now  illegal  and 
outlawed,  continued  for  fully  half  a  century.  Slaves  were 
still  stolen  on  the  coast  of  Africa  by  New  England  sea 
captains,  subjected  to  the  pains  and  horrors  of  the  middle 
passage,  and  smuggled  into  Georgia  or  South  Carolina, 
to  be  eagerly  bought  by  the  Southern  planters.  A  Con- 
gressman estimated  that  20,000  blacks  were  thus  smug- 
gled into  the  United  States  annually.  Lafitte's  nest  of 
pirates  at  Barataria  was  a  regular  slave  depot;  so,  too, 
was  Amelia  Island,  Florida.  The  profit  on  a  slave  smug- 
gled into  the  United  States  amounted  to  $350  or  $500,  and 
the  temptation  was  too  great  for  men  to  be  restrained  by 
fear  of  a  law,  which  prescribed  but  light  penalties.  It 
is  even  matter  of  record  that  a  governor  of  Georgia  re- 
signed his  office  to  enter  the  smuggling  trade  on  a  large 
scale.  The  scandal  was  notorious,  and  the  rapidly  grow- 
ing abolition  sentiment  demanded  that  Congress  so  amend 
its  laws  as  to  make  manstealers  at  least  as  subject  to 
them  as  other  malefactors.  But  Congress  tried  the  poli- 


i io  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

tician's  device  of  passing  laws  which  would  satisfy  the 
abolitionists,  the  slave  trader,  and  the  slave  owner  as  well. 
To-day  the  duty  of  the  nation  seems  to  have  been  so  clear 
that  we  have  scant  patience  with  the  paltering  policy  of 
Congress  and  the  Executive  that  permitted  half  a'  century 
of  profitable  law-breaking.  But  we  must  remember  that 
slaves  were  property,  that  dealing  in  them  was  immensely 
profitable,  and  that  while  New  England  wanted  this  profit 
the  South  wanted  the  blacks.  Macaulay  said  that  if  any 
considerable  financial  interest  could  be  served  by  denying 
the  attraction  of  gravitation,  there  would  be  a  very  vigor- 
ous attack  on  that  great  physical  truth.  And  so,  as  there 
were  many  financial  interests  concerned  in  protecting 
slavery,  every  effort  to  effectually  abolish  the  trade  was 
met  by  an  outcry  and  by  shrewd  political  opposition.  The 
slaves  were  better  off  in  the  United  States  than  at  home, 
Congress  was  assured;  they  had  the  blessings  of  Chris- 
tianity; were  freed  from  the  endless  wars  and  perils  of 
the  African  jungle.  Moreover,  they  were  needed  to  de- 
velop the  South,  while  in  the  trade,  the  hardy  and  daring 
sailors  were  trained,  who  in  time  would  make  the  Ameri- 
can navy  the  great  power  of  the  deep.  Political  chicanery 
in  Congress  reinforced  the  clamor  from  without,  and 
though  act  after  act  for  the  destruction  of  the  traffic 
was  passed,  none  proved  to  be  enforcible — in  each  was 
what  the  politicians  of  a  later  day  called  a  "little  joker," 
making  it  ineffective.  But  in  1820  a  law  was  passed  de- 
claring slave-trading  piracy,  and  punishable  with  death. 
So  Congress  had  done  its  duty  at  last,  but  it  was  long 
years  before  the  Executive  rightly  enforced  the  law. 

It  is  needless  to  go  into  the  details  of  the  long  series 
of  Acts  of  Parliament  and  of  Congress,  treaties,  conven- 
tions, and  naval  regulations,  which  gradually  made  the 
outlawry  of  the  slaver  on  the  ocean  complete.  In  the 


MERCHANT   MARINE  in 

humane  work  England  took  the  lead,  sacrificing  the 
flourishing  Liverpool  slave-trade  with  all  its  allied  inter- 
ests ;  sacrificing,  too,  the  immediate  prosperity  of  its  West 
Indian  colonies,  whose  plantations  were  tilled  exclusively 
with  slave  labor,  and  even  paying  heavy  cash  indemnity 
to  Spain  to  secure  her  acquiescence.  Unhappily,  the 
United  States  was  as  laggard  as  England  was  active. 
Indeed,  a  curious  manifestation  of  national  pride  made 
the  American  flag  the  slaver's  badge  of  immunity,  for  the 
Government  stubbornly — and  properly — refused  to  grant 
to  British  cruisers  the  right  to  search  vessels  under  our 
flag,  and  as  there  were  few  or  no  American  men-of-war 
cruising  on  the  African  coast,  the  slaver  under  the  Stars 
and  Stripes  was  virtually  immune  from  capture.  In  1842 
a  treaty  with  Great  Britain  bound  us  to  keep  a  consider- 
able squadron  on  that  coast,  and  thereafter  there  was  at 
least  some  show  of  American  hostility  to  the  infamous 
traffic. 

The  vitality  of  the  traffic  in  the  face  of  growing  inter- 
national hostility  is  to  be  explained  by  its  increasing 
profits.  The  effect  of  the  laws  passed  against  it  was  to 
make  slaves  cheaper  on  the  coast  of  Africa  and  dearer  at 
the  markets  in  America.  A  slave  that  cost  $20  would 
bring  $500  in  Georgia.  A  ship  carrying  500  would  bring 
its  owners  $240,000,  and  there  were  plenty  of  men  willing 
to  risk  the  penalties  of  piracy  for  a  share  of  such  pro- 
digious profits.  Moreover,  the  seas  swarmed  then  with 
adventurous  sailors — mostly  of  American  birth — to  whom 
the  very  fact  that  slaving  was  outlawed  made  it  more  at- 
tractive. The  years  of  European  war  had  bred  up  among 
New  Englanders  a  daring  race  of  privateersmen — their 
vocation  had  long  been  piracy  in  all  but  name,  a  fact 
which  in  these  later  days  the  maritime  nations 
recognize  by  trying  to  abolish  privateering  by  inter- 


112  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

national  agreement.  When  the  wars  of  the  early  years 
of  the  nineteenth  century  ended  the  privateersmen  looked 
about  for  some  seafaring  enterprise  which  promised  profit. 
A  few  became  pirates,  more  went  into  the  slave-trade. 
Men  of  this  type  were  not  merely  willing  to  risk  their 
lives  in  a  criminal  calling,  but  were  quite  as  ready  to 
fight  for  their  property  as  to  try  to  save  it  by  flight.  The 
slavers  soon  began  to  carry  heavy  guns,  and  with  desper- 
ate crews  were  no  mean  antagonists  for  a  man-of-war. 
Many  of  the  vessels  that  had  been  built  for  privateers  were 
in  the  trade,  ready  to  fight  a  cruiser  or  rob  a  smaller  slaver, 
as  chance  offered.  We  read  of  some  carrying  as  many 
as  twenty  guns,  and  in  that  sea  classic,  "Tom  Cringle's 
Log,"  there  is  a  story — obviously  founded  on  fact — of  a 
fight  between  a  British  sloop-of-war  and  a  slaver  that 
gives  a  vivid  idea  of  the  desperation  with  which  the  out- 
laws could  fight.  But  sometimes  the  odds  were  hopeless, 
and  the  slaver  could  not  hope  to  escape  by  force  of  arms 
or  by  flight.  Then  the  sternness  of  the  law,  together  with 
a  foolish  rule  concerning  the  evidence  necessary  to  con- 
vict, resulted  in  the  murder  of  the  slaves,  not  by  ones  or 
twos,  but  by  scores,  and  even  hundreds,  at  a  time.  For  it 
was  the  unwise  ruling  of  the  courts  that  actual  presence 
of  slaves  on  a  captured  ship  was  necessary  to  prove  that 
she  was  engaged  in  the  unlawful  trade.  Her  hold  might 
reek  with  the  odor  of  the  imprisoned  blacks,  her  decks 
show  unmistakable  signs  of  their  recent  presence,  leg-irons 
and  manacles  might  bear  dumb  testimony  to  the  purpose 
of  her  voyage,  informers  in  the  crew  might  even  betray 
the  captain's  secret ;  but  if  the  boarders  from  the  man-of- 
war  found  no  negroes  on  the  ship,  she  went  free.  What 
was  the  natural  result?  When  a  slaver,  chased  by  a 
cruiser,  found  that  capture  was  certain,  her  cargo  of  slaves 
was  thrown  overboard.  The  cruiser  in  the  distance  might 


MERCHANT  MARINE  113, 

detect  the  frightful  odor  that  told  unmistakably  of  a  slave- 
ship.  Her  officers  might  hear  the  screams  of  the  unhappy 
blacks  being  flung  into  the  sea.  They  might  even  see  the 
bodies  floating  in  the  slaver's  wake;  but  if,  on  boarding 
the  suspected  craft,  they  found  her  without  a  single  cap- 
tive, they  could  do  nothing.  This  was  the  law  for  many 
years,  and  because  of  it  thousands  of  slaves  met  a  cruel 
death  as  the  direct  result  of  the  effort  to  save  them  from 
slavery.  Many  stories  are  told  of  these  wholesale  drown- 
ings.  The  captain  of  the  British  cruiser  "Black  Joke" 
reports  of  a  case  in  which  he  was.  pursuing  two  slave 
ships : 

"When  chased  by  the  tenders  both  put  back,  made  all 
sail  up  the  river,  and  ran  on  shore.  During  the  chase  they 
were  seen  from  our  vessels  to  throw  the  slaves  overboard 
by  twos,  shackled  together  by  the  ankles,  and  left  in  this 
manner  to  sink  or  swim  as  best  they  could.  Men,  women, 
and  children  were  seen  in  great  numbers  struggling  in  the 
water  by  everyone  on  board  the  two  tenders,  and,  dreadful 
to  relate,  upward  of  150  of  these  wretched  creatures  per- 
ished in  this  way." 

In  this  case,  the  slavers  did  not  escape  conviction, 
though  the  only  penalty  inflicted  was  the  seizure  of  their 
vessels.  The  pursuers  rescued  some  of  the  drowning 
negroes,  who  were  able  to  testify  that  they  had  been  on 
the  suspected  ship,  and  condemnation  followed.  The  cap- 
tain of  the  slaver  "Brillante"  took  no  chance  of  such  a 
disaster.  Caught  by  four  cruisers  in  a  dead  calm,  hidden 
from  his  enemy  by  the  night,  but  with  no  chance  of  escap- 
ing before  dawn,  this  man-stealer  set  about  planning  mur- 
der on  a  plan  so  large  and  with  such  system  as  perhaps 
has  not  been  equaled  since  Caligula.  First  he  had  his 
heaviest  anchor  so  swung  that  cutting  a  rope  would  drop 
it.  Then  the  chain  cable  was  stretched  about  the  ship, 


H4  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

outside  the  rail,  and  held  up  by  light  bits  of  rope,  that 
would  give  way  at  any  stout  pull.  Then  the  slaves — 600 
in  all — were  brought  up  from  below,  open-eyed,  whisper- 
ing, wondering  what  new  act  in  the  pitiful  drama  of  their 
lives  this  midnight  summons  portended.  With  blows  and 
curses  the  sailors  ranged  them  along  the  rail  and 
bound  them  to  the  chain  cable.  The  anchor  was  cut  loose, 
plunging  into  the  sea  it  carried  the  cable  and  the  shackled 
slaves  with  it  to  the  bottom.  The  men  on  the  approach- 
ing man-of-war's  boats,  heard  a  great  wail  of  many  voices, 


"BOUND  THEM  TO  THE  CHAIN  CABLE" 

a  rumble,  a  splash,  then  silence,  and  when  they  reached 
the  ship  its  captain  politely  showed  them  that  there  were 
no  slaves  aboard,  and  laughed  at  their  comments  on  the 
obvious  signs  of  the  recent  presence  of  the  blacks. 

A  favorite  trick  of  the  slaver,  fleeing  from  a  man-of- 
war,  was  to  throw  over  slaves  a  few  at  a  time  in  the  hope 


MERCHANT   MARINE  115 

that  the  humanity  of  the  pursuers  would  impel  them  to 
stop  and  rescue  the  struggling  negroes,  thus  giving  the 
slave-ship  a  better  chance  of  escape.  Sometimes  these  hap- 
less blacks  thus  thrown  out,  as  legend  has  it  Siberian 
peasants  sometimes  throw  out  their  children  as  ransom 
to  pursuing  wolves,  were  furnished  with  spars  or  barrels 
to  keep  them  afloat  until  the  pursuer  should  come  up; 
and  occasionally  they  were  even  set  adrift  by  boat-loads. 
It  was  hard  on  the  men  of  the  navy  to  steel  their  hearts 
to  the  cries  of  these  castaways  as  the  ship  sped  by  them ; 
but  if  the  great  evil  was  to  be  broken  up  it  could  not  be 
by  rescuing  here  and  there  a  slave,  but  by  capturing  and 
punishing  the  traders.  Many  officers  of  our  navy  have 
left  on  record  their  abhorrence  of  the  service  they  were  thus 
engaged  in,  but  at  the  same  time  expressed  their  convic- 
tion that  it  was  doing  the  work  of  humanity.  They  were 
obliged  to  witness  such  human  suffering  as  might  well 
move  the  stoutest  human  heart.  At  times  they  were  even 
forced  to  seem  as  merciless  to  the  blacks  as  the  slave- 
traders  themselves;  but  in  the  end  their  work,  like  the 
merciful  cruelty  of  the  surgeon,  made  for  good. 

When  a  slaver  was  overhauled  after  so  swift  a  chase 
that  her  master  had  no  opportunity  to  get  rid  of  his  damn- 
ing cargo,  the  boarding  officers  saw  sights  that  scarce 
Inferno  itself  could  equal.  To  look  into  her  hold,  filled 
with  naked,  writhing,  screaming,  struggling  negroes  was 
a  sight  that  one  could  see  once  and  never  forget.  The 
effluvium  that  arose  polluted  even  the  fresh  air  of  the 
ocean,  and  burdened  the  breeze  for  miles  to  windward. 
The  first  duty  of  the  boarding  officer  was  to  secure  the 
officers  of  the  craft  with  their  papers.  Not  infrequently 
such  vessels  would  be  provided  with  two  captains  and  two 
sets  of  papers,  to  be  used  according  to  the  nationality  of 
the  warship  that  might  make  the  capture ;  but  the  men  of 

\ 


n6  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

all  navies  cruising  on  the  slave  coast  came  in  time  to  be 
expert  in  detecting  such  impostures.  The  crew  once 
under  guard,  the  first  task  was  to  alleviate  in  some  degree 
the  sufferings  of  the  slaves.  But  this  was  no  easy  task, 
for  the  overcrowded  vessel  could  not  be  enlarged,  and  its 
burden  could  in  no  way  be  decreased  in  mid-ocean.  Even 
if  near  the  coast  of  Africa,  the  negroes  could  not  be  re- 
leased by  the  simple  process  of  landing  them  at  the  nearest 
point,  for  the  land  was  filled  with  savage  tribes,  the  cap- 
tives were  commonly  from  the  interior,  and  would  merely 
have  been  murdered  or  sold  anew  into  slavery,  had  they 
been  thus  abandoned.  In  time  the  custom  grew  up  of 
taking  them  to  Liberia,  the  free  negro  state  established 
in  Africa  under  the  protection  of  the  United  States.  But 
it  can  hardly  be  said  that  much  advantage  resulted  to  the 
individual  negroes  rescued  by  even  this  method,  for  the 
Liberians  were  not  hospitable,  slave  traders  camped  upon 
the  borders  of  their  state,  and  it  was  not  uncommon  for 
a  freed  slave  to  find  himself  in  a  very  few  weeks  back 
again  in  the  noisome  hold  of  the  slaver.  Even  under  the 
humane  care  of  the  navy  officers  who  were  put  in  com- 
mand of  captured  slavers  the  human  cattle  suffered 
grievously.  Brought  on  deck  at  early  dawn,  they  so 
crowded  the  ships  that  it  was  almost  impossible  for  the 
sailors  to  perform  the  tasks  of  navigation.  One  officer, 
who  was  put  in  charge  of  a  slaver  that  carried  700  slaves, 
writes : 

"They  filled  the  waist  and  gangways  in  a  fearful  jam, 
for  there  were  over  700  men,  women,  boys,  and  young 
girls.  Not  even  a  waistcloth  can  be  permitted  among 
slaves  on  board  ship,  since  clothing  even  so  slight  would 
breed  disease.  To  ward  off  death,  ever  at  work  on  a 
slave  ship,  I  ordered  that  at  daylight  the  negroes  should 
be  taken  in  squads  of  twenty  or  more,  and  given  a  salt- 


MERCHANT   MARINE  117 

water  bath  by  the  hose-pipe  of  the  pumps.  This  brought 
renewed  life  after  their  fearful  nights  on  the  slave  deck. 
No  one  who  has  never  seen  a  slave  deck  can 
form  an  idea  of  its  horrors.  Imagine  a  deck  about  20 
feet  wide,  and  perhaps  120  feet  long,  and  5  feet  high. 
Imagine  this  to  be  the  place  of  abode  and  sleep  during 
long,  hot,  healthless  nights  of  720  human  beings!  At 
sundown,  when  they  were  carried  below,  trained  slaves 
received  the  poor  wretches  one  by  one,  and  laying  each 
creature  on  his  side  in  the  wings,  packed  the  next  against 
him,  and  the  next,  and  the  next,  and  so  on,  till  like  so 
many  spoons  packed  away  they  fitted  into  each  other  a 
living  mass.  Just  as  they  were  packed  so  must  they  re- 
main, for  the  pressure  prevented  any  movement  or  the 
turning  of  hand  or  foot,  until  the  next  morning,  when 
from  their  terrible  night  of  horror  they  were  brought  on 
deck  once  more,  weak  and  worn  and  sick."  Then,  after 
all  had  come  up  and  been  splashed  with  salt  water  from 
the  pumps,  men  went  below  to  bring  up  the  dead.  There 
was  never  a  morning  search  of  this  sort  that  was  fruitless. 
The  stench,  the  suffocation,  the  confinement,  oftentimes 
the  violence  of  a  neighbor,  brought  to  every  dawn  its  tale 
of  corpses,  and  with  scant  gentleness  all  were  brought  up 
and  thrown  over  the  side  to  the  waiting  sharks.  The 
officer  who  had  this  experience  writes  also  that  it  was 
thirty  days  after  capturing  the  slaver  before  he  could  land 
his  helpless  charges. 

No  great  moral  evil  can  long  continue  when  the  atten- 
tion of  men  has  been  called  to  it,  and  when  their  con- 
sciences, benumbed  by  habit,  have  been  aroused  to  appre- 
ciation of  the  fact  that  it  is  an  evil.  To  be  sure,  we,  with 
the  accumulated  knowledge  of  our  ancestors  and  our 
minds  filled  with  a  horror  which  their  teachings  instilled, 
sometimes  think  that  they  were  slow  to  awaken  to  the 


ii8  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

enormity  of  some  evils  they  tolerated.  So  perhaps  our 
grandchildren  may  wonder  that  we  endured,  and  even 
defended,  present-day  conditions,  which  to  them  will 
appear  indefensible.  And  so  looking  back  on  the  long 
continuance  of  the  slave-trade,  we  wonder  that  it  could 
have  made  so  pertinacious  a  fight  for  life.  We  marvel, 
too,  at  the  character  of  some  of  the  men  engaged  in  it  in 
its  earlier  and  more  lawful  days,  forgetting  that  their 
minds  had  not  been  opened,  that  they  regarded  the  negro 
as  we  regard  a  beeve.  If  in  some  future  super-refined 
state  men  should  come  to  abstain  from  all  animal  food, 
perhaps  the  history  of  the  Chicago  stock-yards  will  be  as 
appalling  as  is  that  of  the  Bight  of  Benin  to-day,  and  that 
the  name  of  Armour  should  be  given  to  a  great  industrial 
school  will  seem  as  curious  as  to  us  it  is  inexplicable 
that  the  founder  of  Fanueil  Hall  should  have  dealt  in 
human  flesh. 

It  is,  however,  a  chapter  in  the  story  of  the  American 
merchant  sailor  upon  which  none  will  wish  to  linger,  and 
yet  which  can  not  be  ignored.  In  prosecuting  the  search 
for  slaves  and  their  markets  he  showed  the  qualities  of 
daring,  of  fine  seamanship,  of  pertinacity,  which  have 
characterized  him  in  all  his  undertakings ;  but  the  brutal- 
ity, the  greed,  the  inhumanity  inseparable  from  the  slave- 
trade  make  the  participation  of  Americans  in  it  something 
not  pleasant  to  enlarge  upon.  It  was,  as  I  have  said,  not 
until  the  days  of  the  Civil  War  blockade  that  the  traffic 
was  wholly  destroyed.  As  late  as  1860  the  yacht  "Wan- 
derer," flying  the  New  York  Yacht  Club's  flag,  owned  by  a 
club  member,  and  sailing  under  the  auspices  of  a  member 
of  one  of  the  foremost  families  of  the  South,  made  several 
trips,  and  profitable  ones,  as  a  slaver.  No  armed  vessel 
thought  to  overhaul  a  trim  yacht,  flying  a  private  flag, 
and  on  her  first  trip  her  officers  actually  entertained  at 


MERCHANT  MARINE  119 

dinner  the  officers  of  a  British  cruiser  watching  for 
slavers  on  the  African  coast.  But  her  time  came,  and 
when  in  1860  the  slaver,  Nathaniel  Gordon,  a  citizen  of 
Portland,  Maine,  was  actually  hanged  as  a  pirate,  the 
death-blow  of  the  slave-trade  was  struck.  Thereafter  the 
end  came  swiftly. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  WHALING  INDUSTRY  —  ITS  EARLY  DEVELOPMENT  IN  NEW 
ENGLAND  —  KNOWN  TO  THE  ANCIENTS  —  SHORE  WHALING  — 
BEGINNINGS  OF  THE  DEEP-SEA  FISHERIES  —  THE  PRIZES  OF 
WHALING  —  PIETY  OF  ITS  EARLY  PROMOTERS  —  THE  RIGHT 
WHALE  AND  THE  CACHALOT  —  A  FLURRY  —  SOME  FIGHTING 
WHALES  —  THE  "  ESSEX  "  AND  THE  "  ANN  ALEXANDER  "  — 
TYPES  OF  WHALERS  —  DECADENCE  OF  THE  INDUSTRY  —  EFFECT 
OF  OUR  NATIONAL  WARS  —  THE  EMBARGO  —  SOME  STORIES  OF 
WHALING  LIFE. 

F  N  the  old  "New  England  Primer,"  on  which  the  grow- 
ing minds  of  Yankee  infants  in  the  early  days  of  the 
eighteenth  century  were  regaled,  appears  a  clumsy  wood- 
cut of  a  spouting  whale,  with  these  lines  of  excellent  piety 
but  doubtful  rhyme : 

Whales  in  the  sea 
Their  Lord  obey. 

It  is  significant  of  the  part  which  the  whale  then 
played  in  domestic  economy  that  his  familiar  bulk  should 
be  utilized  to  "point  a  moral  and  adorn  a  tale"  in  the  most 
elementary  of  books  for  the  instruction  of  children.  And 
indeed  by  the  time  the  "New  England  Primer"  was  pub- 
lished, with  its  quaint  lettering  and  rude  illustrations,  the 
whale  fishery  had  come  to  be  one  of  the  chief  occupations 
of  the  seafaring  men  of  the  North  Atlantic  States.  The 
pursuit  of  this  "royal  fish" — as  the  ancient  chroniclers 
call  him  in  contented  ignorance  of  the  fact  that  he  is  not 
a  fish  at  all — had  not,  indeed,  originated  in  New  England, 
but  had  been  practised  by  all  maritime  peoples  of  whom 
history  has  knowledge,  while  the  researches  of  archeolo- 


122  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

gists  have  shown  that  prehistoric  peoples  were  accus- 
tomed to  chase  the  gigantic  cetacean  for  his  blubber,  his 
oil,  and  his  bone.  The  American  Indians,  in  their  frail 
canoes,  the  Esquimaux,  in  their  crank  kayaks,  braved  the 
fury  of  this  aquatic  monster,  whose  size  was  to  that  of  one 
of  his  enemies  as  the  bulk  of  a  battle-ship  is  to  that  of  a 
pigmy  torpedo  launch.  But  the  whale  fishery  in  vessels 
fitted  for  cruises  of  moderate  length  had  its  origin  in 
Europe,  where  the  Basques  during  the  Middle  Ages 
fairly  drove  the  animals  from  the  Bay  of  Biscay,  which 
had  long  swarmed  with  them.  Not  a  prolific  breeder,  the 
whales  soon  showed  the  effect  of  Europe's  eagerness  for 
oil,  whalebone  and  ambergris,  and  by  the  beginning  of 
the  sixteenth  century  the  industry  was  on  the  verge  of 
extinction.  Then  began  that  search  for  a  sea  passage 
to  India  north  of  the  continents  of  Europe  and  America, 
which  I  have  described  in  another  chapter.  The  passage 
was  not  discovered,  but  in  the  icy  waters  great  schools 
of  right  whales  were  found,  and  the  chase  of  the  "  royal 
fish"  took  on  new  vigor.  Of  course  there  was  effort  on 
the  part  of  one  nation  to  acquire  by  violence  a  monopoly 
of  this  profitable  business,  and  the  Dutch,  who  have  done 
much  in  the  cause  of  liberty,  defeated  the  British  in  a 
naval  battle  at  the  edge  of  the  ice  before  the  principle  of 
the  freedom  of  the  fisheries  was  accepted.  To-day  science 
has  discovered  substitutes  for  almost  all  of  worth  that  the 
whales  once  supplied,  and  the  substitutes  are  in  the  main 
marked  improvements  on  the  original.  But  in  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries  the  clear  whale  oil  for 
illuminating  purposes,  the  tough  and  supple  whalebone, 
the  spermaceti  which  filled  the  great  case  in  the  sperm- 
whale's  head,  the  precious  ambergris — prized  even  among 
the  early  Hebrews,  and  chronicled  in  the  Scriptures  as  a 
thing  of  great  price — were  prizes,  in  pursuit  of  which  men 


MERCHANT  MARINE  123 

braved  every  terror  of  the  deep,  threaded  the  ice-floes  of 
the  Arctic,  fought  against  the  currents  about  Cape  Horn, 
and  steered  to  every  corner  of  the  Seven  Seas  the  small, 
stout  brigs  and  barks  of  New  England  make. 

The  whale  came  to  the  New  Englander  long  before  the 
New  Englanders  went  after  him.  In  the  earliest  colonial 
days  the  carcasses  of  whales  were  frequently  found 
stranded  on  the  beaches  of  Cape  Cod  and  Long  Island. 
Old  colonial  records  are  full  of  the  lawsuits  growing  out 
of  these  pieces  of  treasure-trove,  the  finder,  the  owner 
of  the  land  where  the  gigantic  carrion  lay  stranded,  and 
the  colony  all  claiming  ownership,  or  at  least  shares. 
By  1650  all  the  northern  colonies  had  begun  to  pursue  the 
business  of  shore  whaling  to  some  extent.  Crews  were 
organized,  boats  kept  in  readiness  on  the  beach,  and  when- 
ever a  whale  was  sighted  they  would  put  off  with  har- 
poons and  lances  after  the  huge  game,  which,  when  slain, 
would  be  towed  ashore,  and  there  cut  up  and  tried  out, 
to  the  accompaniment  of  a  prodigious  clacking  of  gulls 
and  a  widely  diffused  bad  smell.  This  method  of  whaling 
is  still  followed  at  Amagansett  and  Southampton,  on  the 
shore  of  Long  Island,  though  the  growing  scarcity  of 
whales  makes  catches  infrequent.  In  the  colonial  days, 
however,  it  was  a  source  of  profit  assiduously  cultivated 
by  coastwise  communities,  and  both  on  Long  Island  and 
Cape  Cod  citizens  were  officially  enjoined  to  watch  for 
whales  off  shore.  Whales  were  then  seen  daily  in  New 
York  harbor,  and  in  1669  one  Samuel  Maverick  recorded 
in  a  letter  that  thirteen  whales  had  been  taken  along  the 
south  shore  during  the  winter,  and  twenty  in  the  spring. 

Little  by  little  the  boat  voyages  after  the  leviathans 
extended  further  into  the  .sea  as  the  industry  grew  and 
the  game  became  scarce  and  shy.  The  people  of  Cape 
Cod  were  the  first  to  begin  the  fishery,  and  earliest  per- 


124  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

fected  the  art  of  "saving"  the  whale — that  is,  of  securing 
all  of  value  in  the  carcass.  But  the  people  of  the  little 
island  of  Nantucket  brought  the  industry  to  its  highest 
development,  and  spread  most  widely  the  fame  of  the 
American  whaleman.  Indeed,  a  Nantucket  whaler  laden 
with  oil  was  the  first  vessel  flying  the  Stars  and  Stripes 
that  entered  a  British  port.  It  is  of  a  sailor  on  this  craft 
that  a  patriotic  anecdote,  now  almost  classic,  is  told.  He 
was  unhappily  deformed,  and  while  passing  along  a  Liver- 
pool street  was  greeted  by  a  British  tar  with  a  blow  on 
his  "humpback"  and  the  salutation :  "Hello,  Jack !  What 

you  got  there?"     "Bunker  Hill,  d n  ye!"  responded 

the  Yankee.  "Think  you  can  climb  it  ?"  Far  out  at  sea, 
swept  ever  by  the  Atlantic  gales,  a  mere  sand-bank,  with 
scant  surface  soil  to  support  vegetation,  this  island  soon 
proved  to  its  settlers  its  unfitness  to  maintain  an  agri- 
cultural people.  There  is  a  legend  that  an  islander,  weary 
perhaps  with  the  effort  of  trying  to  wrest  a  livelihood 
from  the  unwilling  soil,  looked  from  a  hilltop  at  the 
whales  tumbling  and  spouting  in  the  ocean.  "There,"  he 
said,  "is  a  green  pasture  where  our  children's  grand- 
children will  go  for  bread."  Whether  the  prophecy  was 
made  or  not,  the  event  occurred,  for  before  the  Revolu- 
tion the  American  whaling  fleet  numbered  360  vessels, 
and  in  the  banner  year  of  the  industry,  1846,  735  ships 
engaged  in  it,  the  major  part  of  the  fleet  hailing  from 
Nantucket.  The  cruises  at  first  were  toward  Greenland 
after  the  so-called  right  whales,  a  variety  of  the  cetaceans 
which  has  an  added  commercial  value  because  of  the 
baleen,  or  whalebone,  which  hangs  in  great  strips  from 
the  roof  of  its  mouth  to  its  lower  jaw,  forming  a  sort  of 
screen  or  sieve  by  which  it  sifts  its  food  out  of  prodigious 
mouthfuls  of  sea  water.  This  most  enormous  of  known 
living  creatures  feeds  upon  very  small  shell-fish,  which 


MERCHANT   MARINE  125 

swarm  in  the  waters  it  frequents.  Opening  wide  its 
colossal  mouth,  a  cavity  often  more  than  fifteen  feet  in 
length,  and  so  deep  from  upper  to  lower  jaw  that  the 
flexible  sheets  of  whalebone,  sometimes  ten  feet  long, 
hang  straight  without  touching  its  floor,  it  takes  a  great 
gulp  of  water.  Then  the  cavernous  jaws  slowly  close, 
expelling  the  water  through  the  whalebone  sieve,  some- 
what as  a  Chinese  laundryman  sprinkles  clothes,  and  the 
small  marine  animals  which  go  to  feed  that  prodigious 
bulk  are  caught  in  the  strainer.  The  right  whale  is  from 
45  to  60  feet  long  in  its  maturity,  and  will  yield  about 
15  tons  of  oil  and  1500  weight  of  whalebone,  though  in- 
dividuals have  been  known  to  give  double  this  amount. 
Most  of  the  vessels  which  put  out  of  Nantucket  and 
New  Bedford,  in  the  earliest  days  of  the  industry,  after 
whales  of  this  sort,  were  not  fitted  with  kettles  and 
furnaces  for  trying  out  the  oil  at  the  time  of  the 
catch,  as  was  always  the  custom  in  the  sperm  -  whale 
fishery.  Their  prey  was  near  at  hand,  their  voyages  com- 
paratively short.  So  the  fat,  dripping,  reeking  blubber 
was  crammed  into  casks,  or  some  cases  merely  thrown 
into  the  ship's  hold,  just  as  it  was  cut  from  the  carcass, 
and  so  brought  back  weeks  later  to  the  home  port — a  ship- 
load of  malodorous  putrefaction.  Old  sailors  who  have 
cruised  with  cargoes  of  cattle,  of  green  hides,  and  of 
guano,  say  that  nothing  that  ever  offended  the  olfactories 
of  man  equals  the  stench  of  a  right  -whaler  on  her  home- 
ward voyage.  Scarcely  even  could  the  slave-ships  com- 
pare with  it.  Brought  ashore,  this  noisome  mass  was 
boiled  in  huge  kettles,  and  the  resulting  oil  sent  to  lighten 
the  night  in  all  civilized  lands.  England  was  a  good 
customer  of  the  colonies,  and  Boston  shipowners  did  a 
thriving  trade  with  oil  from  New  Bedford  or  Nantucket 
to  London.  The  sloops  and  ketches  engaged  in  this  com- 


126  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

merce  brought  back,  as  an  old  letter  of  directions  from 
shipowner  to  skipper  shows,  "course  wicker  flasketts, 
Allom,  Copress,  drum  rims,  head  snares,  shod  shovells, 
window-glass."  The  trade  was  conducted  with  the  same 
piety  that  we  find  manifested  in  the  direction  of  slave- 
ships  and  privateers.  In  order  that  the  oil  may  fetch 
a  good  price,  and  the  voyage  be  speedy,  the  captain  is 
commended  to  God,  and  "That  hee  may  please  to  take 
the  Conduct  of  you,  we  pray  you  look  carefully  that  hee 
bee  worshipped  dayly  in  yor  shippe,  his  Sabbaths  Sancti- 
fiede,  and  all  sinne  and  prophainesse  let  bee  Surpressed." 
In  the  Revolution  the  fisheries  suffered  severely  from  the 
British  cruisers,  and  when,  after  peace  was  declared,  the 
whalemen  began  coming  back  from  the  privateers,  in 
which  they  had  sought  service,  and  the  wharves  of  Nan- 
tucket,  New  Bedford,  and  New  London  began  again  to 
show  signs  of  life,  ,the  Americans  were  confronted  by  the 
closing  of  their  English  markets.  "The  whale  fisheries 
and  the  Newfoundland  fisheries  were  the  nurseries  of 
British  seamen,"  said  the  British  ministry  to  John  Adams, 
who  went  to  London  to  remonstrate.  "If  we  let  Ameri- 
cans bring  oil  to  London,  and  sell  fish  to  our  West  India 
colonies,  the  British  marine  will  decline."  For  a  long  time, 
therefore,  the  whalers  had  to  look  elsewhere  than  to  Eng- 
land for  a  market.  Nevertheless  the  trade  grew.  New 
Bedford,  which  by  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century 
held  three-fourths  of  the  business,  took  it  up  with  great 
vigor.  For  a  time  Massachusetts  gave  bounties  to  en- 
courage the  industry,  but  it  was  soon  strong  enough  to 
dispense  with  them.  By  1789  the  whalers  found  their 
way  to  the  Pacific — destined  in  later  years  to  be  their  chief 
fishing-ground.  In  that  year  the  total  whaling  tonnage 
of  Massachusetts  was  10,210,  with  1611  men  and  an  an- 
nual product  of  7880  barrels  sperm  and  13,130  barrels 


MERCHANT   MARINE  127 

whale  oil.     Fifteen  years  earlier — before  the  war — the 
figures  were  thrice  as  great. 

Before  this  period,  however,  whaling  had  taken  on  a 
new  form.  Deep-sea  whaling,  as  it  was  called,  to  dis- 
tinguish it  from  the  shore  fisheries,  had  begun  long  ago. 
Capt.  Christopher  Hursey,  a  stout  Nantucket  whaleman, 
cruising  about  after  right  whales,  ran  into  a  stiff  north- 
west gale  and  was  carried  far  out  to  sea.  He  struck  a 
school  of  sperm-whales,  killed  one,  and  brought  blubber 
home.  It  was  not  a  new  discovery,  for  the  sperm-whale 
or  cachalot,  had  been  known  for  years,  but  the  great  num- 
bers of  right  whales  and  the  ease  with  which  they  were 
taken,  had  made  pursuit  of  this  nobler  game  uncommon. 
But  now  the  fact,  growing  yearly  more  apparent,  that 
right  whales  were  being  driven  to  more  inaccessible 
haunts,  made  whalers  turn  readily  to  this  new  prey. 
Moreover,  the  sperm-whale  had  in  him  qualities  of  value 
that  made  him  a  richer  prize  than  his  Greenland  cousin. 
True,  he  lacked  the  useful  bone.  His  feeding  habits  did 
not  necessitate  a  sieve,  for,  as  beseems  a  giant,  he  devoured 
stout  victuals,  pieces  of  great  squids — the  fabled  devil- 
fish— as  big  as  a  man's  body  being  found  in  his  stomach. 
Such  a  diet  develops  his  fighting  qualities,  and  while  the 
right  whale  usually  takes  the  steel  sullenly,  and  dies  like 
an  overgrown  seal,  the  cachalot  fights  fiercely,  now  diving 
with  such  a  rush  that  he  has  been  known  to  break  his  jaw 
by  the  fury  with  which  he  strikes  the  bottom  at  the  depth 
of  200  fathoms ;  now  raising  his  enormous  bulk  in  air, 
to  fall  with  an  all-obliterating  crash  upon  the  boat  which 
holds  his  tormentors,  or  sending  boat  and  men  flying  into 
the  air  with  a  furious  blow  of  his  gristly  flukes,  or  turn- 
ing on  his  back  and  crunching  his  assailants  between  his 
cavernous  jaws.  Descriptions  of  the  dying  flurry  of  the 
sperm-whale  are  plentiful  in  whaling  literature,  many  of 


128 


THE   STORY    OF    OUR 


the  best  of  them  being  in  that  ideal  whaleman's  log,  "The 
Cruise  of  the  Cachalot,"  by  Frank  T.  Bullen.  I  quote 
one  of  these : 

"Suddenly  the  mate  gave  a  howl :  'Starn  all — starn 
all !  Oh,  starn !'  and  the  oars  bent  like  canes  as  we  obeyed 
— there  was  an  upheaval  of  the  sea  just  ahead ;  then 


'SENDING  BOAT  AND  MEN  FLYING  INTO  THE  AIB 


slowly,  majestically,  the  vast  body  of  our  foe  rose  into  the 
air.  Up,  up  it  went  while  my  heart  stood  still,  until  the 
whole  of  that  immense  creature  hung  on  high,  apparently 
motionless,  and  then  fell — a  hundred  tons  of  solid  flesh — 
back  into  the  sea.  On  either  side  of  that  mountainous 
mass  the  waters  rose  in  shining  towers  of  snowy  foam, 


MERCHANT   MARINE  129 

which  fell  in  their  turn,  whirling  and  eddying  around  us 
as  we  tossed  and  fell  like  a  chip  in  a  whirlpool.  Blinded 
by  the  flying  spray,  baling  for  very  life  to  free  the  boat 
from  the  water,  with  which  she  was  nearly  full,  it  was 
some  minutes  before  I  was  able  to  decide  whether  we  were 
still  uninjured  or  not.  Then  I  saw,  at  a  little  distance,  the 
whale  lying  quietly.  As  I  looked  he  spouted  and  the 
vapor  was  red  with  his  blood.  'Starn  all!'  again  cried 
our  chief,  and  we  retreated  to  a  considerable  distance. 
The  old  warrior's  practised  eye  had  detected  the  coming 
climax  of  our  efforts,  the  dying  agony,  or  'flurry/  of  the 
great  mammal.  Turning  upon  his  side,  he  began  to  move 
in  a  circular  direction,  slowly  at  first,  then  faster  and 
faster,  until  he  was  rushing  round  at  tremendous  speed, 
his  great  head  raised  quite  out  of  water  at  times,  slashing 
his  enormous  jaws.  Torrents  of  blood  poured  from  his 
spout-hole,  accompanied  by  hoarse  bellowings,  as  of  some 
gigantic  bull,  but  really  caused  by  the  laboring  breath 
trying  to  pass  through  the  clogged  air-passages.  The 
utmost  caution  and  rapidity  of  manipulation  of  the  boat 
was  necessary  to  avoid  his  maddened  rush,  but  this 
gigantic  energy  was  short-lived.  In  a  few  minutes  he 
subsided  slowly  in  death,  his  mighty  body  reclined  on  one 
side,  the  fin  uppermost  waving  limply  as  he  rolled  to  the 
swell,  while  the  small  waves  broke  gently  over  the  carcass 
in  a  low,  monotonous  surf,  intensifying  the  profound 
silence  that  had  succeeded  the  tumult  of  our  conflict  with 
the  late  monarch  of  the  deep." 

Not  infrequently  the  sperm-whale,  breaking  loose 
from  the  harpoon,  would  ignore  the  boats  and  make  war 
upon  his  chief  enemy — the  ship.  The  history  of  the  whale 
fishery  is  full  of  such  occurrences.  The  ship  "Essex," 
of  Nantucket,  was  attacked  and  sunk  by  a  whale,  which 


130  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

planned  its  campaign  of  destruction  as  though  guided  by 
human  intelligence.  He  was  first  seen  at  a  distance  of 
several  hundred  yards,  coming  full  speed  for  the  ship. 
Diving,  he  rose  again  to  the  surface  about  a  ship's  length 
away,  and  then  surged  forward  on  the  surface,  striking 
the  vessel  just  forward  of  the  fore-chains.  "The  ship 
brought  up  as  suddenly  and  violently  as  if  she  had  struck 
a  rock,"  said  the  mate  afterward,  "and  trembled  for  a 
few  seconds  like  a  leaf."  Then  she  began  to  settle,  but 
not  fast  enough  to  satisfy  the  ire  of  the  whale.  Circling 
around,  he  doubled  his  speed,  and  bore  down  upon  the 
"Essex"  again.  This  time  his  head  fairly  stove  in  the 
bows,  and  the  ship  sank  so  fast  that  the  men  were  barely 
able  to  provision  and  launch  the  boats.  Curiously  enough, 
the  monster  that  had  thus  destroyed  a  stout  ship  paid  no 
attention  whatsoever  to  the  little  boats,  which  would  have 
been  like  nutshells  before  his  bulk  and  power.  But  many 
of  the  men  who  thus  escaped  only  went  to  a  fate  more 
terrible  than  to  have  gone  down  with  their  stout  ship. 
Adrift  on  a  trackless  sea,  1000  miles  from  land,  in  open 
boats,  with  scant  provision  of  food  or  water,  they  faced 
a  frightful  ordeal.  After  twenty-eight  days  they  found 
an  island,  but  it  proved  a  desert.  After  leaving  it  the 
boats  became  separated — one  being  never  again  heard  of. 
In  the  others  men  died  fast,  and  at  last  the  living  were 
driven  by  hunger  actually  to  eat  the  dead.  Out  of  the 
captain's  boat  two  only  were  rescued ;  out  of  the  mate's, 
three.  In  all  twelve  men  were  sacrificed  to  the  whale's 
rage. 

Mere  lust  for  combat  seemed  to  animate  this  whale, 
for  he  had  not  been  pursued  by  the  men  of  the  "Essex," 
though  perhaps  in  some  earlier  meeting  with  men  he  had 
felt  the  sting  of  the  harpoon  and  the  searching  thrust  of 
the  lance.  So  great  is  the  vitality  of  the  cachalot  that  it 


MERCHANT  MARINE  131 

not  infrequently  breaks  away  from  its  pursuers,  and  with 
two  or  three  harpoon-heads  in  its  body  lives  to  a  ripe,  if 
not  a  placid,  old  age.  The  whale  that  sunk  the  New 
Bedford  ship  "Ann  Alexander"  was  one  of  these  fighting 
veterans.  With  a  harpoon  deep  in  his  side  he  turned  and 
deliberately  ran  over  and  sunk  the  boat  that  was  fast  to 
him ;  then  with  equal  deliberation  sent  a  second  boat  to 
the  bottom.  This  was  before  noon,  and  occurred  about 
six  miles  from  the  ship,  which  bore  down  as  fast  as  could 
be  to  pick  up  the  struggling  men.  The  whale,  apparently 
contented  with  his  escape,  made  off.  But  about  sunset 
Captain  Delois,  iron  in  hand,  watching  from  the  knight- 
heads  of  the  "Ann  Alexander"  for  other  whales  to  repair 
his  ill-luck,  saw  the  redoubtable  fighter  not  far  away, 
swimming  at  about  a  speed  of  five  knots.  At  the  same 
time  the  whale  spied  the  ship.  Increasing  his  speed  to  fif- 
teen knots,  he  bore  down  upon  her,  and  with  the  full  force 
of  his  more  than  100  tons  bulk  struck  her  "a  terrible  blow 
about  two  feet  from  the  keel  and  just  abreast  of  the  fore- 
mast, breaking  a  large  hole  in  her  bottom,  through  which 
the  water  poured  in  a  rushing  stream."  The  crew  had 
scarce  time  to  get  out  the  boats,  with  one  day's  provisions, 
but  were  happily  picked  up  by  a  passing  vessel  two  days 
later.  The  whale  itself  met  retribution  five  months  later, 
when  it  was  taken  by  another  American  ship.  Two  of  the 
"Ann  Alexander's"  harpoons  were  in  him,  his  head  bore 
deep  scars,  and  in  it  were  imbedded  pieces  of  the  ill-fated 
ship's  timbers. 

Instances  of  the  combativeness  of  the  sperm-whale  are 
not  confined  to  the  records  of  the  whale  fishery.  Even  as 
I  write  I  find  in  a  current  San  Francisco  newspaper  the 
story  of  the  pilot-boat  "Bonita,"  sunk  near  the  Farallon 
Islands  by  a  whale  that  attacked  her  out  of  sheer  wanton- 
ness and  lust  for  fight.  The  "Bonita"  was  lying  hove-to, 


I32  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

lazily  riding  the  swells,  when  in  the  dark — 4t  was  10 
o'clock  at  night — there  came  a  prodigious  shock,  that 
threw  all  standing  to  the  deck  and  made  the  pots  and 
pans  of  the  cook's  galley  jingle  like  a  chime  out  of  tune. 
From  the  deck  the  prodigious  black  bulk  of  a  whale,  about 
eighty  feet  long,  could  be  made  out,  lying  lazily  half  out  of 
water  near  the  vessel.  The  timbers  of  the  "Bonita"  must 
have  been  crushed  by  his  impact,  for  she  began  to  fill, 
and  soon  sank. 

In  this  case  the  disaster  was  probably  not  due  to  any 
rage  or  malicious  intent  on  the  part  of  the  whale.  Indeed, 
in  the  days  when  the  ocean  was  more  densely  populated 
with  these  huge  animals,  collision  with  a  whale  was  a 
well-recognized  maritime  peril.  How  many  of  the  stout 
vessels  against  whose  names  on  the  shipping  list  stands 
the  fatal  word  "missing,"  came  to  their  ends  in  this  way 
can  never  be  known ;  but  maritime  annals  are  full  of  the 
reports  of  captains  who  ran  "bows  on"  into  a  mysterious 
reef  where  the  chart  showed  no  obstruction,  but  which 
proved  to  be  a  whale,  reddening  the  sea  with  his  blood, 
and  sending  the  ship — not  less  sorely  wounded — into 
some  neighboring  port  to  refit. 

The  tools  with  which  the  business  of  hunting  the  whale 
is  pursued  are  simple,  even  rude.  Steam,  it  is  true,  has 
succeeded  to  sails,  and  explosives  have  displaced  the 
sinewy  arm  of  the  harpooner  for  launching  the  deadly 
shafts;  but  in  the  main  the  pursuit  of  the  monsters  is 
conducted  now  as  it  was  sixty  years  ago,  when  to  com- 
mand a  whaler  was  the  dearest  ambition  of  a  New  Eng- 
land coastboy.  The  vessels  were  usually  brigs  or  barks, 
occasionally  schooners,  ranging  from  100  to  500  tons. 
They  had  a  characteristic  architecture,  due  in  part  to  the 
subordination  of  speed  to  carrying  capacity,  and  further  to 
the  specially  heavy  timbering  about  the  bows  to  withstand 


"SUDDKM.Y    THE    MATE    GAVK    A    HOWL:     '  STARN    ALL 


MERCHANT   MARINE  133 

the  crushing  of  the  Arctic  ice-pack.  The  bow  was  scarce 
distinguishable  from  the  stern  by  its  lines,  and  the  masts 
stuck  up  straight,  without  that  rake,  which  adds  so  much 
to  the  trim  appearance  of  a  clipper.  Three  peculiarities 
chiefly  distinguished  the  whalers  from  other  ships  of  the 
same  general  character.  At  the  main  royal-mast  head 
was  fixed  the  "crow's  nest" — in  some  vessels  a  heavy 
barrel  lashed  to  the  mast,  in  others  merely  a  small  plat- 
form laid  on  the  cross-trees,  with  two  hoops  fixed  to  the 
mast  above,  within  which  the  lookout  could  stand  in 
safety.  On  the  deck,  amidships,  stood  the  "try-works," 
brick  furnaces,  holding  two  or  three  great  kettles,  in 
which  the  blubber  was  reduced  to  odorless  oil.  Along 
each  rail  were  heavy,  clumsy  wooden  cranes,  or  davits, 
from  which  hung  the  whale-boats — never  less  than  five, 
sometimes  more,  while  still  others  were  lashed  to  the 
deck,  for  boats  were  the  whale's  sport  and  playthings, 
and  seldom  was  a  big  "fish"  made  fast  that  there  was  not 
work  for  the  ship's  carpenter. 

The  whale-boat,  evolved  from  the  needs  of  this  fishery, 
is  one  of  the  most  perfect  pieces  of  marine  architecture 
afloat — a  true  adaptation  of  means  to  an  end.  It  is 
clinker-built,  about  27  feet  long,  by  6  feet  beam,  with  a 
depth  of  about  2  feet  6  inches ;  sharp  at  both  ends  and 
clean-sided  as  a  mackerel.  Each  boat  carried  five  oars- 
men, who  wielded  oars  of  from  nine  to  sixteen  feet  in 
length,  while  the  mate  steers  with  a  prodigious  oar  ten 
feet  long.  The  bow  oarsman  is  the  harpooner,  but  when 
he  has  made  fast  to  the  whale  he  goes  aft  and  takes  the 
mate's  place  at  the  steering  oar,  while  the  latter  goes  for- 
ward with  the  lances  to  deal  the  final  murderous  strokes. 
This  curious  and  dangerous  change  of  position  in  the 
boat,  often  with  a  heavy  sea  running,  and  with  a  loo-ton 
whale  tugging  at  the  tug-line  seems  to  have  grown  out 


134  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

of  nothing  more  sensible  than  the  insistence  of  mates  on 
recognition  of  their  rank.  But  a  whale-boat  is  not  the 
only  place  where  a  spill  is  threatened  because  some  one 
in  power  insists  on  doing  something  at  once  useless  and 
dangerous. 

The  whale-boat  also  carried  a  stout  mast,  rigging  two 
sprit  sails.  The  mast  was  instantly  unshipped  when  the 
whale  was  struck.  The  American  boats  also  carried 
centerboards,  lifting  into  a  framework  extending  through 
the  center  of  the  craft,  but  the  English  whalemen  omitted 
these  appendages.  A  rudder  was  hung  over  the  side,  for 
use  in  emergencies.  Into  this  boat  were  packed,  with  the 
utmost  care  and  system,  two  line-tubs,  each  holding  from 
loo  to  200  fathoms  of  fine  manila  rope,  one  and  one-half 
inches  round,  and  of  a  texture  like  yellow  silk ;  three  har- 
poons, wood  and  iron,  measuring  about  eight  feet  over 
all,  and  weighing  about  ten  pounds;  three  lances  of  the 
finest  steel,  with  wooden  handles,  in  all  about  eight  feet 
long;  a  keg  of  drinking  water  and  one  of  biscuits;  a 
bucket  and  piggin  for  bailing,  a  small  spade,  knives,  axes, 
and  a  shoulder  bomb-gun.  It  can  be  understood  easily 
that  six  men,  maneuvering  in  so  crowded  a  boat,  with  a 
huge  whale  flouncing  about  within  a  few  feet,  a  line  whiz- 
zing down  the  center,  to  be  caught  in  which  meant  instant 
death,  and  the  sea  often  running  high,  had  need  to  keep 
their  wits  about  them. 

Harpoons  and  lances  are  kept  ground  to  a  razor  edge, 
and,  propelled  by  the  vigorous  muscles  of  brawny  whale- 
men, often  sunk  out  of  sight  through  the  papery  skin 
and  soft  blubber  of  the  whale.  Beyond  these  primitive 
appliances  the  whale  fishery  never  progressed  very  far. 
It  is  true  that  in  later  days  a  shoulder-gun  hurled  the  har- 
poon, explosive  bombs  replaced  the  lances,  the  ships  were 
in  some  cases  fitted  with  auxiliary  steam-power,  and  in 


MERCHANT  MARINE  135 

a  few  infrequent  instances  steam  launches  were  employed 
for  whale-boats.  But  progress  was  not  general.  The  old- 
fashioned  whaling  tubs  kept  the  seas,  while  the  growing 
scarcity  of  the  whales  and  the  blow  to  the  demand  for  oil 
dealt  by  the  discovery  of  petroleum,  checked  the  develop- 
ment of  the  industry.  Now  the  rows  of  whalers  rotting 
at  New  Bedford's  wharves,  and  the  somnolence  of  Nan- 
tucket,  tell  of  its  virtual  demise. 

These  two  towns  were  built  upon  the  prosperity  of 
the  whale  fishery.  \Vhen  it  languished  their  fortunes 
sunk,  never  to  rise  to  their  earlier  heights,  though  cotton- 
spinning  came  to  occupy  the  attention  of  the  people  of 
New  Bedford,  while  Nantucket  found  a  placid  prosperity 
in  entertaining  summer  boarders.  And  even  during  the 
years  when  whales  were  plentiful,  and  their  oil  still  in 
good  demand,  there  came  periods  of  interruption  to  the 
trade  and  poverty  to  its  followers.  The  Revolution  first 
closed  the  seas  to  American  ships  for  seven  long  years, 
and  at  its  close  the  whalers  found  their  best  market — 
England — still  shut  against  them.  Moreover,  the  high 
seas  during  the  closing  years  of  the  eighteenth  and  the 
opening  of  the  nineteenth  centuries  were  not  as  to-day, 
when  a  pirate  is  as  scarce  a  beast  of  prey  as  a  highwayman 
on  Hounslow  Heath.  The  Napoleonic  wars  had  broken 
down  men's  natural  sense  of  order  and  of  right,  and  the 
seas  swarmed  with  privateers,  who  on  occasion  were 
ready  enough  to  turn  pirates.  Many  whalers  fell  a  prey 
to  these  marauders,  whose  operations  were  rather  en- 
couraged than  condemned  by  the  European  nations.  Both 
England  and  France  were  at  this  period  endeavoring  to 
lure  the  whalemen  from  the  United  Colonies  by  promise 
of  special  concessions  in  trade,  or  more  effective  protec- 
tion on  the  high  seas  than  their  own  weakling  govern- 
ments could  assure  them.  Some  Nantucket  whalemen 


136  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

were  indeed  enticed  to  the  new  English  whaling  town  at 
Dartmouth,  near  Halifax,  or  to  the  French  town  of  Dun- 
kirk. But  the  effort  to  transplant  the  industry  did  not  suc- 
ceed, and  the  years  that  followed,  until  the  fateful  em- 
bargo of  1807,  were  a  period  of  rapid  growth  for  the 
whale  fishery  and  increasing  wealth  for  those  who  pur- 
sued it.  In  the  form  of  its  business  organization  the 
business  of  whaling  was  the  purest  form  of  profit-sharing 
we  have  ever  seen  in  the  United  States.  Everybody  on 
the  ship,  from  captain  to  cabin-boy,  was  a  partner,  vitally 
interested  in  the  success  of  the  voyage.  Each  had  his 
"lay" — that  is  to  say,  his  proportionate  share  of  the  pro- 
ceeds of  the  catch.  Obed  Macy,  in  his  "History  of 
Nantucket,"  says :  "The  captain's  lay  is  generally  one- 
seventeenth  part  of  all  obtained;  the  first  officer's  one- 
twenty-eighth  part;  the  second  officer's,  one-forty-fifth; 
the  third  officer's,  one-sixtieth;  a  boat-steerer's  from  an 
eightieth  to  a  hundred-and-twentieth,  and  a  foremast 
hand's,  from  a  hundred-and-twentieth  to  a  hundred-and- 
eighty-fifth  each."  These  proportions,  of  course,  varied 
— those  of  the  men  according  to  the  ruling  wages  in  other 
branches  of  the  merchant  service;  those  of  the  officers 
to  correspond  with  special  qualities  of  efficiency.  All  the 
remainder  of  the  catch  went  to  the  owners,  who  put  into 
the  enterprise  the  ship  and  outfitted  her  for  a  cruise,  which 
usually  occupied  three  years.  Their  investment  was  there- 
fore a  heavy  one,  a  suitable  vessel  of  3OO-tons  burden 
costing  in  the  neighborhood  of  $22,000,  and  her  outfit 
$18,000  to  $20,000.  Not  infrequently  the  artisans  en- 
gaged in  fitting  out  a  ship  were  paid  by  being  given 
"lays,"  like  the  sailor.  In  such  a  case  the  boatmaker  who 
built  the  whale-boats,  the  ropemaker  who  twisted  the 
stout,  flexible  manila  cord  to  hold  the  whale,  the  sailmaker 
and  the  cooper  were  all  interested  with  the  crew  and  the 


MERCHANT  MARINE  137 

owners  in  the  success  of  the  voyage.  It  was  the  most  prac- 
tical communism  that  industry  has  ever  seen,  and  it 
worked  to  the  satisfaction  of  all  concerned  as  long  as 
the  whaling  trade  continued  profitable. 

The  wars  in  which  the  American  people  engaged  dur- 
ing the  active  days  of  the  whale  fishery — the  Revolution, 
the  War  of  1812,  and  the  Civil  War — were  disastrous  to 
that  industry,  and  from  the  depredations  committed  by 
the  Confederate  cruisers  in  the  last  conflict  it  never  fully 
recovered.  The  nature  of  their  calling  made  the  whale- 
men peculiarly  vulnerable  to  the  evils  of  war.  Cruising 
in  distant  seas,  always  away  from  home  for  many  months, 
often  for  years,  a  war  might  be  declared  and  fought  to  a 
finish  before  they  knew  of  it.  In  the  disordered  Napole- 
onic days  they  never  could  tell  whether  the  flag  floating 
at  the  peak  of  some  armed  vessel  encountered  at  the  an- 
tipodes was  that  of  friend  or  foe.  During  both  the  wars 
with  England  they  were  the  special  objects  of  the  enemy's 
malignant  attention.  From  the  earliest  days  American 
progress  in  maritime  enterprise  was  viewed  by  the  British 
with  apprehension  and  dislike.  Particularly  did  the 
growth  of  the  cod  fisheries  and  the  chase  of  the  whale 
arouse  transatlantic  jealousy,  the  value  of  these  callings  as 
nurseries  for  seamen  being  only  too  plainly  apparent.  Ac- 
cordingly the  most  was  made  of  the  opportunities  afforded 
by  war  for  crushing  the  whaling  industry.  Whalers  were 
chased  to  their  favorite  fishing-grounds,  captured,  and 
burned.  With  cynical  disregard  of  all  the  rules  of  civil- 
ized warfare — supposing  war  ever  to  be  civilized — the 
British  gave  to  the  captured  whalers  only  the  choice  of 
serving  in  British  men-of-war  against  their  own  country- 
men, or  re-entering  the  whaling  trade  on  British  ships, 
thus  building  up  the  British  whale  fishery  at  the  expense 
of  the  American.  The  American  response  to  these  tac- 


138  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

tics  was  to  abandon  the  business  during  war  time.  In 
1775  Nantucket  alone  had  had  150  vessels,  aggregating 
15,000  tons,  afloat  in  pursuit  of  the  whale.  The  trade  was 
pushed  with  such  daring  and  enterprise  that  Edmund 
Burke  was  moved  to  eulogize  its  followers  in  an  eloquent 
speech  in  the  British  House  of  Commons.  "Neither  the 
perseverance  of  Holland/*  he  said,  "nor  the  activity  of 
France,  nor  the  dexterous  and  firm  sagacity  of  English 
enterprise,  ever  carried  this  most  perilous  mode  of  hardy 
industry  to  the  extent  to  which  it  has  been  pushed  by  this 
most  recent  people."  But  the  eloquence  of  Burke  could 
not  halt  the  British  ministry  in  its  purpose  to  tax  the 
colonies  despite  their  protests.  The  Revolution  followed, 
and  the  whalemen  of  Nantucket  and  New  Bedford 
stripped  their  vessels,  sent  down  yards  and  all  running 
rigging,  stowed  the  sails,  tied  their  barks  and  brigs  to  the 
deserted  wharves  and  went  out  of  business.  The  trade 
thus  rudely  checked  had  for  the  year  preceding  the  out- 
break of  the  war  handled  45,000  barrels  of  sperm  oil, 
8500  barrels  of  right-whale  oil,  and  75,000  pounds  of 
bone. 

The  enforced  idleness  of  the  Revolutionary  days  was 
not  easily  forgotten  by  the  whalemen,  and  their  discon- 
tent and  complainings  were  great  when  the  nation  was 
again  embroiled  in  war  with  Great  Britain  in  1812.  It 
can  not  be  said  that  their  attitude  in  the  early  days  of 
that  conflict  was  patriotic.  They  had  suffered — both  at 
the  hands  of  France  and  England — wrongs  which  might 
well  rouse  their  resentment.  They  had  been  continually 
impressed  by  England,  and  the  warships  of  both  nations 
had  seized  American  whalers  for  real  or  alleged  viola- 
tions of  the  Orders  in  Council  or  the  Ostend  Manifesto; 
but  the  whalemen  were  more  eager  for  peace,  even  with 
the  incidental  perils  due  to  war  in  Europe,  than  for  war, 


MERCHANT  MARINE  139 

with  its  enforced  idleness.  When  Congress  ordered  the 
embargo  the  whalers  were  at  first  explicitly  freed  from 
its  operations;  but  this  provision  being  seized  upon  to 
cover  evasions  of  the  embargo,  they  were  ultimately  in- 
cluded. When  war  was  finally  declared,  the  protests  of 
the  Nantucket  people  almost  reached  the  point  of  threat- 
ening secession.  A  solemn  memorial  was  first  addressed 
to  Congress,  relating  the  exceedingly  exposed  condition 
of  the  island  and  its  favorite  calling  to  the  perils  of  war, 
and  begging  that  the  actual  declaration  of  war  might 
be  averted.  When  this  had  availed  nothing,  and  the 
young  nation  had  rushed  into  battle  with  a  courage  that 
must  seem  to  us  now  foolhardy,  the  Nantucketers 
adopted  the  doubtful  expedient  of  seeking  special  favor 
from  the  enemy.  An  appeal  for  immunity  from  the  or- 
dinary acts  of  war  was  addressed  to  the  British  Admiral 
Cochrane,  and  a  special  envoy  was  sent  to  the  British 
naval  officer  commanding  the  North  American  station, 
to  announce  the  neutrality  of  the  island  and  to  beg  im- 
munity from  assault  and  pillage,  and  assurance  that  one 
vessel  would  be  permitted  to  ply  unmolested  between 
the  island  and  the  mainland.  As  a  result  of  these  nego- 
tiations, Nantucket  formally  declared  her  neutrality,  and 
by  town  meeting  voted  to  accede  to  the  British  demand 
that  her  people  pay  no  taxes  for  the  support  of  the  United 
States.  In  all  essential  things  the  island  ceased  to  be 
a  part  of  the  United  States,  its  people  neither  rendering 
military  service  nor  contributing  to  the  revenues.  But 
their  submission  to  the  British  demands  did  not  save  the 
whale-trade,  for  repeated  efforts  to  get  the  whalers  de- 
clared neutral  and  exempt  from  capture  failed. 

Half  a  century  of  peace  followed,  during  which  the 
whaling  industry  rose  to  its  highest  point ;  but  was  again 
on  the  wane  when  the  Civil  War  let  loose  upon  the  re- 


140  THE  STORY   OF   OUR 

maining  whalemen  the  Confederate  cruisers,  the  "Shen- 
andoah"  alone  burning  thirty-four  of  them.  From  this 
last  stroke  the  industry,  enfeebled  by  the  lessened  de- 
mand for  its  chief  product,  and  by  the  greater  cost  and 
length  of  voyages  resulting  from  the  growing  scarcity 
of  whales,  never  recovered.  To-day  its  old-time  ports 
are  deserted  by  traffic.  Stripped  of  all  that  had  sala- 
ble value,  its  ships  rot  on  mud-banks  or  at  moldering 


wharves.  The  New  England  boy,  whose  ambition  half 
a  century  ago  was  to  ship  on  a  whaler,  with  a  boy's  lay 
and  a  straight  path  to  the  quarter-deck,  now  goes  into 
a  city  office,  or  makes  for  the  West  as  a  miner  or  a  rail- 
road man.  The  whale  bids  fair  to  become  as  extinct  as 
the  dodo,  and  the  whaleman  is  already  as  rare  as  the 
buffalo. 

With   the  extension   of  the   fishing-grounds   to  the 


MERCHANT  MARINE  141 

Pacific  began  the  really  great  days  of  the  whale  fishery. 
Then,  from  such  a  port  as  Nantucket  or  New  Bedford 
a  vessel  would  set  out,  to  be  gone  three  years,  carrying 
with  her  the  dearest  hopes  and  ambitions  of  all  the  in- 
habitants. Perhaps  there  would  be  no  house  without 
some  special  interest  in  her  cruise.  Tradesmen  of  a  dozen 
sorts  supplied  stores  on  shares.  Ambitious  boys  of  the 
best  families  sought  places  before  the  mast,  for  there 
was  then  no  higher  goal  for  youthful  ambition  than 
command  of  a  whaler.  Not  infrequently  a  captain  would 
go  direct  from  the  marriage  altar  to  his  ship,  taking  a 
young  bride  off  on  a  honeymoon  of  three  years  at  sea. 
Of  course  the  home  conditions  created  by  this  almost 
universal  masculine  employment  were  curious.  The 
whaling  towns  were  populated  by  women,  children,  and 
old  men.  The  talk  of  the  street  was  of  big  catches  and 
the  prices  of  oil  and  bone.  The  conversation  in  the 
shaded  parlors,  where  sea-shells,  coral,  and  the  trophies 
of  Pacific  cruises  were  the  chief  ornaments,  was  of  the 
distant  husbands  and  sons,  the  perils  they  braved,  and 
when  they  might  be  expected  home.  The  solid,  square 
houses  the  whalemen  built,  stoutly  timbered  as  though 
themselves  ships,  faced  the  ocean,  and  bore  on  their 
ridge-pole  a  railed  platform  called  the  bridge,  whence  the 
watchers  could  look  far  out  to  sea,  scanning  the  horizon 
for  the  expected  ship.  Lucky  were  they  if  she  came  into 
the  harbor  without  half-masted  flag  or  other  sign  of 
disaster.  The  profits  of  the  calling  in  its  best  days  were 
great.  The  best  .New  London  record  is  that  of  the 
"Pioneer/'  made  in  an  eighteen-months'  cruise  in  1864-5. 
She  brought  back  1391  barrels  of  oil  and  22,650  pounds 
of  bone,  all  valued  a*  $150,060.  The  "Envoy,"  of  New 
Bedford,  after  being  condemned  as  unseaworthy,  was 
fitted  out  in  1847  at  a  cost  of  $8000,  and  sent  out  on  a 


142  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

final  cruise.  She  found  oil  and  bone  to  the  value  oi 
$132,450;  and  reaching  San  Francisco  in  the  flush  times, 
was  sold  for  $6000.  As  an  offset  to  these  records,  is  the 
legend  of  the  Nantucket  captain  who  appeared  off  the 
harbor's  mouth  after  a  cruise  of  three  years.  "What 
luck,  cap'n  ?"  asked  the  first  to  board.  "Well,  I  got  nary 
a  barrel  of  oil  and  nary  a  pound  of  bone;  but  I  had  a 
mighty  good  sail." 

When  the  bar  was  crossed  and  the  ship  fairly  in  blue 
water,  work  began.  Rudyard  Kipling  has  a  character- 
istic story,  "How  the  Ship  Found  Herself,"  telling  how 
each  bolt  and  plate,  each  nut,  screw-thread,  brace,  and 
rivet  in  one  of  those  iron  tanks  we  now  call  ships  adjusts 
itself  to  its  work  on  the  first  voyage.  On  the  whaler  the 
crew  had  to  find  itself,  to  readjust  its  relations,  come  to 
know  its  constituent  parts,  and  learn  the  ways  of  its 
superiors.  Sometimes  a  ship  was  manned  by  men  who 
had  grown  up  together  and  who  had  served  often  on  the 
same  craft;  but  as  a  rule  the  men  of  the  forecastle  were 
a  rough  and  vagrant  lot;  capable  seamen,  indeed,  but  of 
the  adventurous  and  irresponsible  sort,  for  service  be- 
fore the  mast  on  a  whaler  was  not  eagerly  sought  by  the 
men  of  the  merchant  service.  For  a  time  Indians  were 
plenty,  and  their  fine  physique  and  racial  traits  made 
them  skillful  harpooners.  As  they  became  scarce,  negroes 
began  to  appear  among  the  whalemen,  with  now  and  then 
a  Lascar,  a  South  Sea  Islander,  Portuguese,  and  Ha- 
waiians.  The  alert  New  Englanders,  trained  to  the  life 
of  the  sea,  seldom  lingered  long  in  the  forecastle,  but 
quickly  made  their  way  to  the  posts  of  command.  There 
they  were  despots,  for  nowhere  was  the  discipline  more 
severe  than  on  whalemen.  The  rule  was  a  word  and  a 
blow — and  the  word  was  commonly  a  curse.  The  ship 
was  out  for  a  five-years'  cruise,  perhaps,  and  the  captain 


MERCHANT   MARINE  143 

Knew  that  the  safety  of  all  depended  upon  unquestion- 
ing obedience  to  his  authority.  Once  in  a  while  even  the 
cowed  crew  would  revolt,  and  infrequent  stories  of  mut- 
iny and  murder  appear  in  the  record  of  the  whale  trade. 
The  whaler,  like  a  man-of-war,  carried  a  larger  crew 
than  was  necessary  for  the  work  of  navigation,  and  it 
was  necessary  to  devise  work  to  keep  the  men  employed. 
As  a  result,  the  ships  were  kept  cleaner  than  any  others 
in  the  merchant  service,  even  though  the  work  of  trying 
out  the  blubber  was  necessarily  productive  of  smoke, 
soot,  and  grease. 

As  a  rule  the  voyage  to  the  Pacific  whaling  waters 
was  round  Cape  Horn,  though  occasionally  a  vessel  made 
its  way  to  the  eastward  and  rounded  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope.  Almost  always  the  world  was  circumnavigated 
before  return.  In  early  days  the  Pacific  whalers  found 
their  game  in  plenty  along  the  coast  of  Chili ;  but  in  time 
they  were  forced  to  push  further  and  further  north  until 
the  Japan  Sea  and  Bering  Sea  became  the  favorite  fish- 
ing places. 

The  whale  was  usually  first  sighted  by  the  lookout 
in  the  crow's  nest.  A  warm-blooded  animal,  breathing 
with  lungs,  and  not  with  gills,  like  a  fish,  the  whale  is 
obliged  to  come  to  the  surface  of  the  water  periodically 
to  breathe.  As  he  does  so  he  exhales  the  air  from  his 
lungs  through  blow-holes  or  spiracles  at  the  top  of  his 
head;  and  this  warm,  moist  air,  coming  thus  from  his 
lungs  into  the  cool  air,  condenses,  forming  a  jet  of  vapor 
looking  like  a  fountain,  though  there  is,  in  fact,  no  spout 
of  water.  "There  she  blows !  B-1-o-o-o-ws !  Blo-o-ows !" 
cries  the  lookout  at  this  spectacle.  All  is  activity  at 
once  on  deck,  the  captain  calling  to  the  lookout  for  the 
direction  and  character  of  the  "pod"  or  school.  The 
sperm  whale  throws  his  spout  forward  at  an  angle,  in- 


144  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

stead  of  perpendicularly  into  the  air,  and  hence  is  easily 
distinguished  from  right  whales  at  a  distance.  The  ship 
is  then  headed  toward  the  game,  coming  to  about  a 
mile  away.  As  the  whale,  unless  alarmed,  seldom  swims 
more  than  two  and  a  half  miles  an  hour,  and  usually 


"THERE  SHE  BLOWS 


stays  below  only  about  forty-five  minutes  ,at  a  time, 
there  is  little  difficulty  in  overhauling  him.  Then  the 
boats  are  launched,  the  captain  and  a  sufficient  number  of 
men  staying  with  the  ship. 

In  approaching  the  whale,  every  effort  is  made  to 


MERCHANT   MARINE  145 

come  up  to  him  at  the  point  of  least  danger.  This  point 
is  determined  partly  by  the  lines  of  the  whale's  vision, 
partly  by  his  methods  of  defense.  The  right  whale  can 
only  see  dead  ahead,  and  his  one  weapon  is  his  tail, 
which  gigantic  fin,  weighing  several  tons  and  measuring 
sometimes  twenty  feet  across  the  tips  of  the  flukes,  he 
swings  with  irresistible  force  and  all  the  agility  of  a 
fencer  at  sword-play.  He,  therefore,  is  attacked  from 
the  side,  well  toward  his  jaws.  The  sperm  whale,  how- 
ever, is  dangerous  at  both  ends.  His  tail,  though  less 
elastic  than  that  of  the  right  whale,  can  deal  a  prodigious 
up-and-down  blow,  while  his  gigantic  jaws,  well  gar- 
nished with  sharp  teeth,  and  capacious  gullet,  that  read- 
ily could  gulp  down  a  man,  are  his  chief  terrors.  His 
eyes,  too,  set  obliquely,  enable  him  to  command  the  sea 
at  all  points  save  dead  ahead,  and  it  is  accordingly  from 
this  point  that  the  fishermen  approach  him.  But  however 
stealthily  they  move,  the  opportunities  for  disappoint- 
ment are  many.  Big  as  he  is,  the  whale  is  not  sluggish. 
In  an  instant  he  may  sink  bodily  from  sight;  or,  throw- 
ing his  flukes  high  in  air,  "sound,"  to  be  seen  no  more ; 
or,  casting  himself  bodily  on  the  boat,  blot  it  out  of 
existence;  or,  taking  it  in  his  jaws,  carry  it  down  with 
him.  But  supposing  the  whale  to  be  oblivious  of  its 
approach,  the  boat  comes  as  near  as  seems  safe,  and  the 
harpooner,  poised  in  the  bow,  his  knee  against  the  bracket 
that  steadies  him,  lets  fly  his  weapon;  and,  hit  or  miss, 
follows  it  up  at  once  with  a  second  bent  onto  the  same 
line.  Some  harpooners  were  of  such  strength  and  skill 
that  they  could  hurl  their  irons  as  far  as  four  or  five 
fathoms.  In  one  famous  case  boats  from  an  American 
and  British  ship  were  in  pursuit  of  the  same  whale,  the 
British  boat  on  the  inside.  It  is  the  law  of  the  fishery 
that  the  whale  belongs  to  the  boat  that  first  makes  fast — 


146 


THE   STORY    OF    OUR 


and  many  a  pretty  quarrel  has  grown  out  of  this  rule. 
So  in  this  instance — seeing  the  danger  that  his  rival 
might  win  the  game — the  American  harpooner,  with  a 
prodigious  effort,  darted  his  iron  clear  over  the  rival  boat 
and  deep  into  the  mass  of  blubber. 

What  a  whale  will  do  when  struck  no  man  can  tell 
before  the  event.  The  boat-load  of  puffing,  perspiring 
men  who  have  pulled  at  full  speed  up  to  the  monster  may 


>sa 


"TAKING  IT  IN  HIS  JAWS" 

suddenly  find  themselves  confronted  with  a  furious,  vin- 
dictive, aggressive  beast  weighing  eighty  tons,  and  bent 
on  grinding  their  boat  and  themselves  to  powder;  or  he 
may  simply  turn  tail  and  run.  Sometimes  he  sounds, 
going  down,  down,  down,  until  all  the  line  in  the  boat  is 
exhausted,  and  all  that  other  boats  can  bend  on  is  gone 
too.  Then  the  end  is  thrown  over  with  a  drag,  and  his 


MERCHANT   MARINE  147 

reappearance  awaited.  Sometimes  he  dashes  off  over  the 
surface  of  the  water  at  a  speed  of  fifteen  knots  an  hour, 
towing  the  boat,  while  the  crew  hope  that  their  "Nan- 
tucket  sleigh-ride"  will  end  before  they  lose  the  ship  for 
good.  But  once  fast,  the  whalemen  try  to  pull  close 
alongside  the  monster.  Then  the  mate  takes  the  long, 
keen  lance  and  plunges  it  deep  into  the  great  shuddering 
carcass,  "churning"  it  up  and  down  and  seeking  to 
pierce  the  heart  or  lungs.  This  is  the  moment  of  danger ; 
for,  driven  mad  with  pain,  the  great  beast  rolls  and 
thrashes  about  convulsively.  If  the- boat  clings  fast  to 
his  side,  it  is  in  danger  of  being  crushed  or  engulfed  at 
any  moment;  if  it  retreats,  he  may  recover  himself  and 
be  off  before  the  death-stroke  can  be  delivered.  In 
later  days  the  explosive  bomb,  discharged  from  a  dis- 
tance, has  done  away  with  this  peril;  but  in  the  palmy 
days  of  the  whale  fishery  the  men  would  rush  into  the 
circle  of  sea  lashed  into  foam  by  those  mighty  fins,  get 
close  to  the  whale,  as  the  boxer  gets  under  the  guard  of 
his  foe,  smite  him  with  lance  and  razor-edged  spade  until 
his  spouts  ran  red,  and  to  his  fury  there  should  succeed 
the  calm  of  approaching  death.  Then  the  boats,  pulled 
off.  The  command  was  "Pipes  all" ;  and,  placidly  smok- 
ing in  the  presence  of  that  mighty  death,  the  whalers 
awaited  their  ship. 

Stories  of  "fighting  whales"  fill  the  chronicles  of  our 
old  whaling  ports.  There  was  the  old  bull  sperm  en- 
countered by  Captain  Huntling  off  the  River  De  La 
Plata,  which  is  told  us  in  a  fascinating  old  book,  "The 
Nimrod  of  the  Sea."  The  first  boat  that  made  fast  to 
this  tough  old  warrior  he  speedily  bit  in  two;  and  while 
her  crew  were  swimming  away  from  the  wreck  with  all 
possible  speed,  the  whale  thrashed  away  at  the  pieces 
until  all  were  reduced  to  small  bits.  Two  other  boats 


148  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

meanwhile  made  fast  to  the  furious  animal.  Wheeling 
about  in  the  foam,  reddened  with  his  blood,  he  crushed 
them  as  a  tiger  would  crunch  its  prey.  All  about  him 
were  men  struggling  in  the  water — twelve  of  them,  the 
crews  of  the  two  demolished  boats.  Of  the  boats  them- 
selves nothing  was  left  big  enough  to  float  a  man.  The 
ship  was  miles  away.  Three  of  the  sailors  climbed  on 
the  back  of  their  enemy,  clinging  by  the  harpoons  and 
ropes  still  fast  to  him,  while  the  others  swam  away  for 
dear  life,  thinking  only  of  escaping  that  all-engulfing 
jaw  or  the  blows  of  that  murderous  tail.  Now  came  an- 
other boat  from  the  ship,  picked  up  the  swimmers,  and 
cautiously  rescued  those  perched  on  the  whale's  back 
from  their  island  of  shuddering  flesh.  The  spirit  of  the 
monster  was  still  undaunted.  Though  six  harpoons  were 
sunk  into  his  body  and  he  was  dragging  300  fathoms  of 
line,  he  was  still  in  righting  mood,  crunching  oars,  kegs, 
and  bits  of  boat  for  more  enemies  to  demolish.  All 
hands  made  for  the  ship,  where  Captain  Hunting,  quite 
as  dogged  and  determined  as  his  adversary,  was  prepar- 
ing to  renew  the  combat.  Two  spare  boats  were  fitted 
for  use,  and  again  the  whalemen  started  after  their  foe. 
He,  for  his  part,  remained  on  the  battle-ground,  amid 
the  debris  of  his  hunters'  property,  and  awaited  attack. 
Nay,  more;  he  churned  the  water  with  his  mighty  tail 
and  moved  forward  to  meet  his  enemy,  with  ready  jaw 
to  grind  them  to  bits.  The  captain  at  the  boat-oar,  or 
steering-oar,  made  a  mighty  effort  and  escaped  the  rush ; 
then  sent  an  explosive  bomb  into  the  whale's  vitals  as 
he  surged  past.  Struck  unto  death,  the  great  bull  went 
into  his  flurry ;  but  in  dying  he  rolled  over  the  captain's 
boat  like  an  avalanche,  destroying  it  as  completely  as 
he  had  the  three  others.  So  man  won  the  battle,  but  at  a 
heavy  cost.  The  whaleman  who  chronicled  this  fight 


MERCHANT   MARINE  149 

says  significantly:  "The  captain  proceeded  to  Buenos 
Ayres,  as  much  to  allow  his  men,  who  were  mostly 
green,  to  run  away,  as  for  the  purpose  of  refitting,  as  he 
knew  they  would  be  useless  thereafter."  It  was  well 
recognized  in  the  whaling  service  that  men  once  thor- 
oughly "gallied,"  or  frightened,  were  seldom  useful  again ; 
and,  indeed,  most  of  the  participants  in  this  battle  did, 
as  the  captain  anticipated,  desert  at  the  first  port. 

Curiously  enough,  there  did  not  begin  to  be  a  litera- 
ture of  whaling  until  the  industry  went  into  its  deca- 
dence. The  old-time  whalers,  leadirfg  lives  of  continual 
romance  and  adventure,  found  their  calling  so  common- 
place that  they  noted  shipwrecks,  mutinies,  and  disaster 
in  the  struggles  of  the  whale  baldly  in  their  logbooks, 
without  attempt  at  graphic  description.  It  is  true  the 
piety  of  Nantucket  did  result  in  incorporating  the  whale 
in  the  local  hymn-book,  but  with  what  doubtful  literary 
success  these  verses  from  the  pen  of  Peleg  Folger — him- 
self a  whaleman — will  too  painfully  attest : 

Thou  didst,  O  Lord,  create  the  mighty  whale, 
That  wondrous  monster  of  a  mighty  length; 

Vast  is  his  head  and  body,  vast  his  tail, 

Beyond  conception  his  unmeasured  strength. 

When  the  surface  of  the  sea  hath  broke 

Arising  from  the  dark  abyss  below, 
His  breath  appears  a  lofty  stream  of  smoke, 

The  circling  waves  like  glittering  banks  of  snow. 

And  though  he  furiously  doth  us  assail, 
Thou  dost  preserve  us  from  all  dangers  free; 

He  cuts  our  boats  in  pieces  with  his  tail, 
And  spills  us  all  at  once  into  the  sea. 

Stories  of  the  whale  fishery  are  plentiful,  and  of  late 
vears  there  has  been  some  effort  made  to  gather  these 


150  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

into  a  kind  of  popular  history  of  the  industry.  The  fol- 
lowing incidents  are  gathered  from  a  pamphlet,  published 
in  the  early  days  of  the  nineteenth  century,  by  Thomas 
Nevins,  a  New  England  whaler : 

"A  remarkable  instance  of  the  power  which  the  whale  pos- 
sesses in  its  tail  was  exhibited  within  my  own  observation  in 
the  year  1807.  On  the  2Qth  of  May  a  whale  was  harpooned* by 
an  officer  belonging  to  the  'Resolution.'  It  descended  a  con- 
siderable depth,  and  on  its  reappearance  evinced  an  uncommon 
degree  of  irritation.  It  made  such  a  display  of  its  fins  and  tail 
that  few  of  the  crew  were  hardy  enough  to  approach  it.  The 
captain,  observing  their  timidity,  called  a  boat  and  himself  struck 
a  second  harpoon.  Another  boat  immediately  followed,  and 
unfortunately  advanced  too  far.  The  tail  was  again  reared  into 
the  air  in  a  terrific  attitude.  The  impending  blow  was  evident. 
The  harpooner,  who  was  directly  underneath,  leaped  overboard, 
and  the  next  moment  the  threatened  stroke  was  impressed  on 
the  center  of  the  boat,  which  it  buried  in  the  water.  Happily 
no  one  was  injured.  The  harpooner  who  leaped  overboard 
escaped  death  by  the  act,  the  tail  having  struck  the  very  spot  on 
which  he  stood.  The  effects  of  the  blow  were  astonishing — the 
keel  was  broken,  the  gunwales  and  every  plank  excepting  two 
were  cut  through,  and  it  was  evident  that  the  boat  would  have 
been  cornpletely  divided,  had  not  the  tail  struck  directly  upon  a 
coil  of  lines.  The  boat  was  rendered  useless. 

"The  Dutch  ship  'Gort-Moolen/  commanded  by  Cornelius 
Gerard  Ouwekaas,  with  a  cargo  of  seven  fish,  was  anchored  in 
Greenland,  in  the  year  1660.  The  captain,  perceiving  a  whale 
ahead  of  his  ship,  beckoned  his  attendants  and  threw  himself 
into  a  boat.  He  was  the  first  to  approach  the  whale,  and  was 
fortunate  enough  to  harpoon  it  before  the  arrival  of  the  second 
boat,  which  was  on  the  advance.  Jacques  Vienkes,  who  had 
the  direction  of  it,  joined  his  captain  immediately  afterward,  and 
prepared  to  make  a  second  attack  on  the  fish  when  it  should  re- 
mount to  the  surface.  At  the  moment  of  its  ascension,  the  boat 
of  Vienkes,  happening,  unfortunately,  to  be  perpendicularly 
above  it,  was  so  suddenly  and  forcibly  lifted  up  by  a  stroke  of 
the  head  of  the  whale  that  it  was  dashed  to  pieces  before  the 


MERCHANT  MARINE  151 

harpooner  could  discharge  his  weapon.  Vienkes  flew  along 
with  the  pieces  of  the  boat,  and  fell  upon  the  back  of  the  animal. 
This  intrepid  seaman,  who  still  retained  his  weapon  in  his 
grasp,  harpooned  the  whale  on  which  he  stood;  and  by  means  of 
the  harpoon  and  the  line,  which  he  never  abandoned,  he  steadied 
himself  firmly  upon  the  fish,  notwithstanding  his  hazardous  situa- 
tion, and  regardless  of  a  considerable  wound  that  he  received  in 
his  leg  in  his  fall  along  with  the  fragments  of  the  boat.  All  the 
efforts  of  the  other  boats  to  approach  the  whale  and  deliver  the 
harpooner  were  futile.  The  captain,  not  seeing  any  other  method 
of  saving  his  urtfortunate  companion,  who  was  in  some  way 
entangled  with  the  line,  called  him  to  cut  it  with  his  knife  and 
betake  himself  to  swimming.  Vienkes,  embarrassed  and  discon- 
certed as  he  was,  tried  in  vain  to  follow  this  council.  His  knife 
was  in  the  pocket  of  his  drawers,  and  being  unable  to  support 
himself  with  one  hand,  he  could  not  get  it  out.  The  whale, 
meanwhile,  continued  advancing  along  the  surface  of  the  water 
with  great  rapidity,  but  fortunately  never  attempted  to  dive. 
While  his  comrades  despaired  of  his  life,  the  harpoon  by  which 
he  held  at  length  disengaged  itself  from  the  body  of  the  whale. 
Vienkes,  being  thus  liberated,  did  not  fail  to  take  advantage  of 
this  circumstance.  He  cast  himself  into  the  sea,  and  by  swim- 
ming endeavored  to  regain  the  boats,  which  continued  the  pur- 
suit of  the  whale.  When  his  shipmates  perceived  him  struggling 
with  the  waves,  they  redoubled  their  exertions.  They  reached 
him  just  as  his  strength  was  exhausted,  and  had  the  happiness 
of  rescuing  this  adventurous  harpooner  from  his  perilous  situa- 
tion. 

"Captain  Lyons,  of  the  'Raith/  of  Leith,  while  prosecuting 
the  whale  fishery  on  the  Labrador  coast,  in  the  season  of  1802, 
discovered  a  large  whale  at  a  short  distance  from  the  ship.  Four 
boats  were  dispatched  in  pursuit,  and  two  of  them  succeeded  in 
approaching  it  so  closely  together  that  two  harpoons  were  struck 
at  the  same  moment.  The  fish  descended  a  few  fathoms  in  the 
direction  of  another  of  the  boats,  which  was  on  the  advance,  rose 
accidentally  beneath  it,  struck  it  with  his  head,  and  threw  the 
boat,  men,  and  apparatus  about  fifteen  feet  in  the  air.  It  was 
inverted  by  the  stroke,  and  fell  into  the  water  with  its  keel  up- 
ward. All  the  people  were  picked  up  alive  by  the  fourth  boat, 


1 52  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

which  was  just  at  hand,  excepting  one  man,  who,  having  got 
entangled  in  the  boat,  fell  beneath  it  and  was  unfortunately 
drowned.  The  fish  was  soon  afterward  killed. 

"In  1822  two  boats  belonging  to  the  ship  'Baffin'  went  in 
pursuit  of  a  whale.  John  Carr  was  harpooner  and  commander 
of  them.  The  whale  they  pursued  led  them  into  a  vast  shoal  of 
his  own  species.  They  were  so  numerous  that  their  blowing  was 
incessant,  and  they  believed  that  they  did  not  see  fewer  than 
a  hundred.  Fearful  of  alarming  them  without  striking  any,  they 
remained  a  while  motionless.  At  last  one  rose  near  Carr's  boat, 
and  he  approached  and,  fatally  for  himself,  harpooned  it.  When 
he  struck,  the  fish  was  approaching  the  boat ;  and,  passing  very 
rapidly,  jerked  the  line  out  of  its  place  over  the  stern  and 
threw  it  upon  the  gunwale.  Its  pressure  in  this  unfavorable 
position  so  careened  the  boat  that  the  side  was  pulled  under 
water  and  it  began  to  fill.  In  this  emergency  Carr,  who  was  a 
brave,  active  man,  seized  the  line,  and  endeavored  to  release  the 
boat  by  restoring  it  to  its  place ;  but  by  some  circumstance  which 
was  never  accounted  for,  a  turn  of  the  line  flew  over  his  arm, 
dragged  him  overboard  in  an  instant,  and  drew  him  under  the 
water,  never  more  to  rise.  So  sudden  was  the  accident  that  only 
one  man,  who  was  watching  him,  saw  what  had  happened;  so 
that  when  the  boat  righted,  which  it  immediately  did,  though 
half  full  of  water,  the  whole  crew,  on  looking  round,  inquired 
what  had  become  of  Carr.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine  a  death 
more  awfully  sudden  and  unexpected.  The  invisible  bullet  could 
not  have  effected  more  instantaneous  destruction.  The  velocity 
of  the  whale  at  its  first  descent  is  from  thirteen  to  fifteen  feet 
per  second.  Now,  as  this  unfortunate  man  was  adjusting  the 
line  at  the  water's  very  edge,  where  it  must  have  been  perfectly 
tight,  owing  to  its  obstruction  in  running  out  of  the  boat,  the 
interval  between  the  fastening  of  the  line  about  him  and  his  dis- 
appearance could  not  have  exceeded  the  third  part  of  a  second 
of  time,  for  in  one  second  only  he  must  have  been  dragged  ten 
or  twelve  feet  deep.  Indeed,  he  had  not  time  for  the  least 
exclamation;  and  the  person  who  saw  his  removal  observed  that 
it  was  so  exceeding  quick  that,  though  his  eye  was  upon  him  at 
the  moment,  he  could  scarcely  distinguish  his  figure  as  he  dis- 
appeared. 


MERCHANT   MARINE  153 

"As  soon  as  the  crew  recovered  from  their  consternation,  they 
applied  themselves  to  the  needful  attention  which  the  lines  re- 
quired. A  second  harpoon  was  struck  from  the  accompanying 
boat,  on  the  rising  of  the  whale  to  the  surface,  and  some  lances 
were  applied;  but  this  melancholy  occurrence  had  cast  such  a 
damp  on  all  present  that  they  became  timid  and  inactive  in  their 
subsequent  duties.  The  whale,  when  nearly  exhausted,  was  al- 
lowed to  remain  some  minutes  unmolested,  till,  having  recovered 
some  degree  of  energy,  it  made  a  violent  effort  and  tore  itself 
away  from  the  harpoons.  The  exertions  of  the  crews  thus  proved 
fruitless,  and  were  attended  with  serious  loss. 

"A  harpooner  belonging  to  the  'Henrietta/  of  Whitby,  when 
engaged  in  lancing  a  whale  into  which  h»  had  previously  struck 
a  harpoon,  incautiously  cast  a  little  line  under  his  feet  that  he 
had  just  hauled  into  the  boat,  after  it  had  been  drawn  out  by  the 
fish.  A  painful  stroke  of  his  lance  induced  the  whale  to  dart 
suddenly  downward.  His  line  began  to  run  out  from  under  his 
feet,  and  in  an  instant  caught  him  by  a  turn  round  his  body. 
He  had  but  just  time  to  cry  out,  "Clear  away  the  line!  Oh, 
dear !"  when  he  was  almost  cut  asunder,  dragged  overboard,  and 
never  seen  afterward.  The  line  was  cut  at  that  moment,  but 
without  avail.  The  fish  descended  to  a  considerable  depth  and 
died,  from  whence  it  was  drawn  to  the  surface  by  the  lines 
connected  with  it  and  secured." 

Whaling  has  almost  ceased  to  have  a  place  in  the 
long  list  of  our  national  industries.  Its  implements  and 
the  relics  of  old-time  cruises  fill  niches  in  museums  as 
memorials  of  a  practically  extinct  calling.  Along  the 
wharves  of  New  Bedford  and  New  London  a  few  old 
brigs  lie  rotting,  but  so  effective  have  been  the  ravages 
of  time  that  scarcely  any  of  the  once  great  fleet  survive 
even  in  this  invalid  condition.  The  whales  have  been 
driven  far  into  the  Arctic  regions,  whither  a  few  whalers 
employing  the  modern  and  unsportsmanlike  devices  of 
steam  and  explosives,  follow  them  for  a  scanty  profit. 
But  the  glory  of  the  whale  fishery  is  gone,  leaving  hardly 


154  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

a  record  behind  it.  In  its  time  it  employed  thousands  of 
stout  sailors ;  it  furnished  the  navy  with  the  material  that 
made  that  branch  of  our  armed  service  the  pride  and 
glory  of  the  nation.  It  explored  unknown  seas  and  car- 
ried the  flag  to  undiscovered  lands.  Was  not  an  Aus- 
trian exploring  expedition  interrupted  as  it  was  about 
to  take  possession  of  land  in  the  Antarctic  in  the  name  of 
Austria  by  encountering  an  American  whaler,  trim  and 
trig,  lying  placidly  at  anchor  in  a  harbor  where  the  Aus- 
trian thought  no  man  had  ever  been  ?  It  built  up  towns  in 
New  England  that  half  a  century  of  lethargy  has  been 
unable  to  kill.  And  so  if  its  brigs — and  its  men — now 
molder,  if  its  records  are  scanty  and  its  history  unwrit- 
ten, still  Americans  must  ever  regard  the  whale  fishery 
as  one  of  the  chief  factors  in  the  building  of  the  nation — 
one  of  the  most  admirable  chapters  in  our  national  story. 


CHAPTER   V 

THE  PRIVATEERS  —  PART  TAKEN  BY  MERCHANT  SAILORS  IN  BUILD- 
ING UP  THE  PRIVATEERING  SYSTEM  —  LAWLESS  STATE  OF  THE 
HIGH  SEAS  —  METHOD  OF  DISTRIBUTING  PRIVATEERING  PROFITS 

—  PICTURESQUE  FEATURES  OF  THE  CALLING  —  THE  GENTLEMEN 
SAILORS  —  EFFECT  ON  THE  REVOLUTIONARY  ARMY  —  PERILS  OF 
PRIVATEERING  —  THE  OLD  JERSEY  PRISON  SHIP  —  EXTENT  OF 
PRIVATEERING  —  EFFECT  ON  AMERICAN  MARINE  ARCHITECTURE 

—  SOME     FAMOUS     PRIVATEERS  —  THE     "  CHASSEUR/'     THE 
"  PRINCE  DE   NEUFCHATEL/'  THE  "  MAMMOTH  " — THE  SYSTEM 
OF  CONVOYS  AND  THE  "RUNNING  SHIPS"  — A  TYPICAL  PRI- 
VATEERS' BATTLE  —  THE  "GENERAL  ARMSTRONG "  AT  FAYAL — 
SUMMARY  OF  THE  WORK  OF  THE  PRIVATEERS. 

TN  the  early  days  of  a  new  community  the  citizen,  be 
he  never  so  peaceful,  is  compelled,  perforce,  to  take 
on  the  ways  and  the  trappings  of  the  fighting  man.  The 
pioneer  is  half  hunter,  half  scout.  The  farmer  on  the 
outposts  of  civilization  must  be  more  than  half  a  soldier ; 
the  cowboy  or  ranchman  on  our  southwest  frontier  goes 
about  a  walking  arsenal,  ready  at  all  times  to  take  the 
laws  into  his  own  hands,  and  scorning  to  call  on  sheriffs 
or  other  peace  officers  for  protection  against  personal 
injury.  And  while  the  original  purpose  of  this  militant, 
even  defiant,  attitude  is  self-protection,  those  who  are 
long  compelled  to  maintain  it  conceive  a  contempt  for 
the  law,  which  they  find  inadequate  to  guard  them,  and 
not  infrequently  degenerate  into  bandits. 

It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury was  already  well  into  its  second  quarter  before  there 
was  a  semblance  of  recognized  law  upon  the  high  seas. 


156  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

Pirates  and  buccaneers,  privateers,  and  the  naval  ves- 
sels of  the  times  that  were  little  more  than  pirates,  made 
the  lot  of  the  merchant  sailor  of  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries  a  precarious  one.  Wars  were  con- 
stant, declared  on  the  flimsiest  pretexts  and  with  scant 
notice ;  so  that  the  sailor  putting  out  from  port  in  a  time 
of  universal  peace  could  feel  no  certainty  that  the  first 
foreign  vessel  he  met  might  not  capture  him  as  spoil  of 
some  war  of  which  he  had  no  knowledge.  Accordingly, 
sailors  learned  to  defend  themselves,  and  the  ship's 
armory  was  as  necessary  and  vastly  better  stocked  than 
the  ship's  medicine  case.  To  point  a  carronade  became 
as  needful  an  accomplishment  as  to  box  the  compass; 
and  he  was  no  A.  B.  who  did  not  know  how  to  swing  a 
cutlass. 

Out  of  such  conditions,  and  out  of  the  wars  which  the 
Napoleonic  plague  forced  upon  the  world,  sprung  the 
practise' of  privateering;  and  while  it  is  the  purpose  of 
this  book  to  tell  the  story  of  the  American  merchant 
sailor  only,  it  could  not  be  complete  without  some  ac- 
count, however  brief,  of  the  American  privateersman. 
For,  indeed,  the  two  were  one  throughout  a  considerable 
period  of  our  maritime  history,  the  sailor  turning  pri- 
vateersman or  the  privateersman  sailor  as  political  or 
trade  conditions  demanded.  In  our  colonial  times,  and 
in  the  earlier  days  of  the  nation,  to  be  a  famous  priva- 
teersman, or  to  have  had  a  hand  in  fitting  out  a  success- 
ful privateer,  was  no  mean  passport  to  fame  and  fortune. 
Some  of  the  names  most  eminent  in  the  history  of  our 
country  appear  in  connection  with  the  outfitting  or  com- 
mand of  privateers ;  and  not  a  few  of  the  oldest  fortunes 
of  New  England  had  their  origin  in  this  form  of  legal- 
ized piracy.  And,  after  all,  it  is  the  need  of  the  times 
that  fixes  the  morality  of  an  act.  To-day  privateering  is 


MERCHANT   MARINE  157 

dead ;  not  by  any  formal  agreement,  for  the  United  States, 
at  the  Congress  of  Paris,  refused  to  agree  to  its  out- 
lawry ;  but  in  our  war  with  Spain  no  recourse  was  had 
to  letters  of  marque  by  either  combatant,  and  it  seems 
unlikely  that  in  any  future  war  between  civilized  nations 
either  party  will  court  the  contempt  of  the  world  by 
going  back  to  the  old  custom  of  chartering  banditti  to 
steal  the  property  of  private  citizens  of  the  hostile  na- 
tion if  found  at  sea.  Private  property  on  shore  has  long 
been  respected  by  the  armies  of  Christendom,  and  why 
its  presence  in  a  ship  rather  than  in- a  cart  makes  it  a  fit 
object  of  plunder  baffles  the  understanding.  Perhaps  in 
time  the  kindred  custom  of  awarding  prize  money  to 
naval  officers,  which  makes  of  them  a  species  of  priva- 
teers, and  pays  them  for  capturing  a  helpless  merchant 
ship,  while  an  army  officer  gets  nothing  for  taking  the 
most  powerful  fort,  may  likewise  be  set  aside  as  a  relic 
of  medieval  warfare. 

In  its  earliest  days,  of  course,  privateering  was  the 
weapon  of  a  nation  weak  at  sea  against  one  with  a  large 
navy.     So  when  the  colonies  threw  down  the  gage  of 
battle  to  Great  Britain,  almost  the  first  act  of  the  Revo- 
lutionary government  was  to  authorize  private  owners  to 
fit  out  armed  ships  to  prey  on  British  commerce.    Some 
of  the  shipowners  of  New  England  had  enjoyed  some 
experience  of  the  profits  of  this  peculiar  industry  in  the 
Seven  Years'  War,  when  quite  a  number  of  colonial  pri- 
vateers harried  the  French  on  the  seas,  and  accordingly 
the  response  was  prompt.     In  enterprises  of  this  char-  \ 
acter  the  system  of  profit-sharing,  already  noted  in  con-    ' 
nection  with  whaling,  obtained.    The  owners  took  a  cer-  ! 
tain  share  of  each  prize,  and  the  remainder  was  divided  I 
among  the  officers  and  crew  in  certain  fixed  proportions.  / 
How  great  were  the  profits  accruing  to  a  privateersman  in 


158  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

a  "run  of  luck"  might  be  illustrated  by  two  facts  set  forth 
by  Maclay,  whose  "History  of  American  Privateers"  is 
the  chief  authority  on  the  subject.  He  asserts  that  "it 
frequently  happened  that  even  the  common  sailors  re- 
ceived as  their  share  in  one  cruise,  over  and  above  their 
wages,  one  thousand  dollars — a  small  fortune  in  those 
days  for  a  mariner,"  and  further  that  "one  of  the  boys 
in  the  'Ranger/  who  less  than  a  month  before  had  left 
a  farm,  received  as  his  share  one  ton  of  sugar,  from 
thirty  to  forty  gallons  of  fourth-proof  Jamaica  rum,  some 
twenty  pounds  of  cotton,  and  about  the  same  quantity 
of  ginger,  logwood,  and  allspice,  besides  seven  hundred 
dollars  in  money."  To  be  sure,  in  order  to  enjoy  gains 
like  these,  the  men  had  to  risk  the  perils  of  battle  in 
addition  to  the  common  ones  of  the  sea ;  but  it  is  a  curious 
fact,  recognized  in  all  branches  of  industry,  that  the  mere 
peril  of  a  calling  does  not  deter  men  from  following  it, 
and  when  it  promises  high  profit  it  is  sure  to  be  over- 
crowded. In  civil  life  to-day  the  most  dangerous  callings 
are  those  which  are,  as  a  rule,  the  most  ill  paid. 

Very  speedily  the  privateersmen  became  the  most 
prosperous  and  the  most  picturesque  figures  along  the 
waterside  of  the  Atlantic  cities.  While  the  dignified  mer- 
chant or  shipowner,  with  a  third  interest  in  the  "Dare- 
devil" or  the  "Flybynight,"  might  still  maintain  the  sober 
demeanor  of  a  good  citizen  and  a  pillar  of  the  church, 
despite  his  profits  of  fifty  or  an  hundred  per  cent,  on  each 
cruise,  the  gallant  sailors  who  came  back  to  town  with 
pockets  full  of  easily-won  money,  and  the  recollection 
of  long  and  dismal  weeks  at  sea  behind  them,  were  spec- 
tacular in  their  rejoicings.  Their  money  was  poured  out 
freely  while  it  lasted;  and  their  example  stirred  all  the 
townsboys,  from  the  best  families  down  to  the  scourings 
of  the  docks,  to  enter  the  same  gentlemanlike  profession. 


MERCHANT   MARINE  159 

Queerly  enough,  in  a  time  of  universal  democracy,  a  pro- 
vision was  made  on  many  of  the  privateers  for  the  young 
men  of  family  who  desired  to  follow  the  calling.  They 
were  called  "gentlemen  sailors,"  and,  in  consideration 
of  their  social  standing  and  the  fact  that  they  were 
trained  to  arms,  were  granted  special  and  unusual  priv- 
ileges, such  as  freedom  from  the  drudgery  of  working 
the  ship,  better  fare  than  the  common  sailors,  and  more 
comfortable  quarters.  Indeed,  they  were  free  of  duty 
except  when  fighting  was  to  be  done,  and  at  other  times 
fulfilled  the  function  of  the  marine  .guards  on  our  mod- 
ern men-of-war.  This  came  to  be  a  very  popular  calling 
for  adventurous  young  men  of  some  family  influence. 
-J  It  has  been  claimed  by  some  writers  that  "the  Revolu- 
jtion  was  won  by  the  New  England  privateers" ;  and,  in- 
deed, there  can  be  no  doubt  that  their  activity  did  con- 
tribute in  no  small  degree  to  the  outcome  of  that  struggle. 
Britain  was  then,  as  now,  essentially  a  commercial  na- 
tion, and  the  outcry  of  her  merchants  when  the  ravages 
of  American  privateers  drove  marine  insurance  rates  up 
to  thirty-three  per  cent.,  and  even  for  a  time  made  com- 
panies refuse  it  altogether,  was  clamorous.  But  there 
was  another  side  to  the  story.  Privateering,  like  all  ir- 
regular service,  was  demoralizing,  not  alone  to  the  men 
engaged  in  it,  but  to  the  youth  of  the  country  as  well. 
The  stories  of  the  easy  life  and  the  great  profits  of  the 
privateersmen  were  circulated  in  every  little  town,  while 
the  revels  of  these  sea  soldiers  in  the  water-front  villages 
were  described  with  picturesque  embellishments  through- 
out the  land.  As  a  result,  it  became  hard  to  get  young 
men  of  spirit  into  the  patriot  armies.  Washington  com- 
plained that  when  the  fortunes  of  his  army  were  at  their 
lowest,  when  he  could  not  get  clothing  for  his  soldiers, 
and  the  snow  at  Valley  Forge  was  stained  with  the  blood 


i6o  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

of  their  unshod  feet,  any  American  shipping  on  a  pri- 
vateer was  sure  of  a  competence,  while  great  fortunes 
were  being  made  by  the  speculators  who  fitted  them  out. 
Nor  was  this  all.  Such  was  the  attraction  of  the  pri- 
vateer's life  that  it  drew  to  it  seamen  from  every  branch 
of  the  maritime  calling.  The  fisheries  and  the  West 
India  trade,  which  had  long  been  the  chief  mainstay  of 
New  England  commerce,  were  ruined,  and  it  seemed  for 
a  time  as  if  the  hardy  race  of  American  seamen  were  to 
degenerate  into  a  mere  body  of  buccaneers,  operating 
under  the  protection  of  international  law,  but  plunderers 
and  spoilers  nevertheless.  Fortunately,  the  long  peace 
which  succeeded  the  War  of  1812  gave  opportunity  for 
the  naturally  lawful  and  civilized  instincts  of  the  Ameri- 
cans to  assert  themselves,  and  this  peril  was  averted. 

It  is,  then,  with  no  admiration  for  the  calling,  and 
yet  with  no  underestimate  of  its  value  to  the  nation,  that 
I  recount  some  of  the  achievements  of  those  who  fol- 
lowed it.  The  periods  when  American  privateering  was  \ 
important  were  those  of  the  Revolution  and  the  War  of  / 
1812.  During  the  Civil  War  the  loss  incurred  by  pri- 
vateers fell  upon  our  own  people,  and  it  is  curious  to 
note  how  different  a  tone  the  writers  on  this  subject 
adopt  when  discussing  the  ravages  of  the  Confederate 
privateers  and  those  which  we  let  loose  upon  British 
commerce  in  the  brave  days  of  1812. 

A  true  type  of  the  Revolutionary  privateersmen  was 
Captain  Silas  Talbot,  of  Massachusetts.  He  was  one  of 
the  New  England  lads  apprenticed  to  the  sea  at  an  early 
age,  having  been  made  a  cabin-boy  at  twelve.  He  rose 
to  command  and  acquired  means  in  his  profession,  as  we 
have  seen  was  common  among  our  early  merchant  sail- 
ors, and  when  the  Revolution  broke  out  was  living  com- 
fortably in  his  own  mansion  in  Providence.  He  enlisted 


MERCHANT  MARINE  161 

in  Washington's  army,  but  left  it  to  become  a  privateer ; 
and  from  that  service  he  stepped  to  the  quarter-deck  of 
a  man-of-war.  This  was  not  an  uncommon  line  of  de- 
velopment for  the  early  privateersmen ;  and,  indeed,  it 
was  not  unusual  to  find  navy  officers,  temporarily  with- 
out commands,  taking  a  cruise  or  two  as  privateers,  until 
Congress  should  provide  more  ships  for  the  regular  serv- 
ice— a  system  which  did  not  tend  to  make  a  Congress, 
which  was  niggardly  at  best,  hasten  to  provide  public 
vessels  for  work  which  was  being  reasonably  well  done 
at  private  expense.  As  a  result  of  this  system,  we  find 
such  famous  naval  names  as  Decatur,  Porter,  Hopkins, 
Preble,  Barry,  and  Barney  also  figuring  in  the  lists  of 
privateersmen.  Talbot's  first  notable  exploit  was  clear- 
ing New  York  harbor  of  several  British  men-of-war  by 
the  use  of  fire-ships.  Washington,  with  his  army,  was 
then  encamped  at  Harlem  Heights,  and  the  British  ships 
were  in  the  Hudson  River  menacing  his  flank.  Talbot, 
in  a  fire-ship,  well  loaded  with  combustibles,  dropped 
down  the  river  and  made  for  the  biggest  of  the  enemy's 
fleet,  the  "Asia."  Though  quickly  discovered  and  made 
the  target  of  the  enemy's  battery,  he  held  his  vessel  on 
her  course  until  fairly  alongside  of  and  entangled  with 
the  "Asia,"  when  the  fuses  were  lighted  and  the  volcanic 
craft  burst  into  roaring  flames  from  stem  to  stern.  So 
rapid  was  the  progress  of  the  flames  that  Talbot  and  his 
companions  could  scarcely  escape  with  their  lives  from 
the  conflagration  they  had  themselves  started,  and  he  lay 
for  days,  badly  burned  and  unable  to  see,  in  a  little  log 
hut  on  the  Jersey  shore.  The  British  ships  were  not 
destroyed ;  but,  convinced  that  the  neighborhood  was  un- 
safe for  them,  they  dropped  down  the  bay;  so  the  end 
sought  for  was  attained.  In  1779  Talbot  was  given 
command  of  the  sloop  "Argo,"  of  100  tons;  "a  mere 


162 


THE   STORY    OF    OUR 


shallop,  like  a  clumsy  Albany  sloop,"  says  his  biographer. 
Sixty  men  from  the  army,  most  of  whom  had  served 
afloat,  were  given  him  for  crew,  and  he  set  out  to  clear 
Long  Island  Sound  of  Tory  privateers;  for  the  loyalists 
in  New  York  were  quite  as  avid  for  spoils  as  the  New 
England  Revolutionists.  On  his  second  cruise  he  took 
seven  prizes,  including  two  of  these  privateers.  One 
of  these  was  a  3OO-ton  ship,  vastly  superior  to  the  "Argo" 
in  armament  and  numbers,  and  the  battle  was  a  fierce 


NEARLY  EYEKY  MAN  ON  THE  QUARTERDECK  OF  THE  "ARGO 
WAS  KILLED  OR  WOUNDED. 

one.  Nearly  every  man  on  the  quarter-deck  of  the 
"Argo"  was  killed  or  wounded;  the  speaking  trumpet 
in  Talbot's  hand  was  pierced  by  two  bullets,  and  a  can- 
non-ball carried  away  the  tail  of  his  coat.  The  damages 
sustained  in  this  battle  were  scarce  repaired  when  an* 
other  British  privateer  appeared,  and  Talbot  again  went 


MERCHANT   MARINE  163 

into  action  and  took  her,  though  of  scarce  half  her  size. 
In  all  this  little  "Argo" — which,  by  the  way,  belonged 
to  Nicholas  Low,  of  New  York,  an  ancestor  of  the  emi- 
nent Seth  Low — took  twelve  prizes.  Her  commander  was 
finally  captured  and  sent  first  to  the  infamous  "Jersey" 
prison-ship,  and  afterward  to  the  Old  Mill  Prison  in 
England. 

The  "Jersey"  prison-ship  was  not  an  uncommon  lot 
for  the  bold  "privateersman,  who,  when  once  consigned 
to  it,  found  that  the  reward  of  a  sea-rover  was  not  al- 


mtf 


THE  PRISON   SHIP  "JERSEY. 


ways  wealth  and  pleasure.  A  Massachusetts  privateers- 
man  left  on  record  a  contemporary  account  of  the  suffer- 
ings of  himself  and  his  comrades  in  this  pestilential 
hulk,  which  may  well  be  condensed  here  to  show  some 
of  the  perils  that  the  adventurers  dared  when  they  took 
to  the  sea. 

After  about  one-third  of  the  captives  made  with  this 
writer  had  been  seized  and  carried  away  to  serve  against 
their  country  on  British  war-ships,  the  rest  were  conveyed 
to  the  "Jersey,"  which  had  been  originally  a  74-gtm  ship, 


164  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

then  cut  down  to  a  hulk  and  moored  at  the  Wallabout, 
at  that  time  a  lonely  and  deserted  place  on  the  Long 
Island  shore,  now  about  the  center  of  the  Brooklyn  river 
front.  "I  found  myself,"  writes  the  captive,  "in  a  loath- 
some prison  among  a  collection  of  the  most  wretched  and 
disgusting  objects  I  ever  beheld  in  human  form.  Here 
was  a  motley  crew  covered  with  rags  and  filth,  visages 
pallid  with  disease,  emaciated  with  hunger  and  anxiety, 
and  retaining  hardly  a  trace  of  their  original  appearance. 
.  .  .  The  first  day  we  could  obtain  no  food,  and  sel- 
dom on  the  second  could  prisoners  secure  it  in  season 
for  cooking  it.  Each  prisoner  received  one-third  as  much 
as  was  allotted  to  a  tar  in  the  British  navy.  Our  bill 
of  fare  was  as  follows :  On  Sunday,  one  pound  of  biscuit, 
one  pound  of  pork,  and  half  a  pint  of  peas ;  Monday,  one 
pound  of  biscuit,  one  pint  of  oatmeal,  and  two  ounces 
of  butter ;  Tuesday,  one  pound  of  biscuit  and  two  pounds 
of  salt  beef,  etc.,  etc.  If  this  food  had  been  of  good 
quality  and  properly  cooked,  as,  we  had  no  labor  to  per- 
form, it  would  have  kept  us  comfortable;  but  all  our1 
food  appeared  to  be  damaged.  As  for  the  pork,  we  were 
cheated  out  of  more  than  half  of  it,  and  when  it  was 
obtained  one  would  have  judged  from  its  motley  hues, 
exhibiting  the  consistency  and  appearance  of  variegated 
fancy  soap,  that  it  was  the  flesh  of  the  porpoise  or  sea- 
hog,  and  had  been  an  inhabitant  of  the  ocean  rather  than 
the  sty.  The  peas  were  about  as  digestible  as  grape-shot ; 
and  the  butter — had  it  not  been  for  its  adhesive  prop- 
erties to  retain  together  the  particles  of  biscuit  that  had 
been  so  riddled  by  the  worms  as  to  lose  all  their  attrac- 
tion of  cohesion,  we  should  not  have  considered  it  a  de- 
sirable addition  to  our  viands.  The  flour  and  oatmeal 
were  sour,  and  the  suet  might  have  been  nosed  the 
whole  length  of  our  ship.  Many  times  since,  when  I  have 


MERCHANT   MARINE  165 

seen  in  the  country  a  large  kettle  of  potatoes  and  pump- 
kins steaming  over  the  fire  to  satisfy  the  appetite  of  some 
farmer's  swine,  I  have  thought  of  our  destitute  and 
starved  condition,  and  what  a  luxury  we  should  have 
considered  the  contents  of  that  kettle  aboard  the  'Jer- 
sey/ .  .  .  About  two  hours  before  sunset  orders 
were  given  the  prisoners  to  carry  all  their  things  below ; 
but  we  were  permitted  to  remain  above  until  we  retired 
for  the  night  into  our  unhealthy  and  crowded  dungeons. 
At  sunset  our  ears  were  saluted  with fc the  insulting  and 
hateful  sound  from  our  keepers  of  'Down,  rebels,  down/ 
and  we  were  hurried  below,  the  hatchways  fastened  over 
us,  and  we  were  left  to  pass  the  night  amid  the  accumu- 
lated horrors  of  sighs  and  groans,  of  foul  vapor,  a 
nauseous  and  putrid  atmosphere,  in  a  stifled  and  almost 
suffocating  heat.  .  .  .  When  any  of  the  prisoners  had 
died  during  the  night,  their  bodies  were  brought  to  the 
upper  deck  in  the  morning  and  placed  upon  the  gratings. 
If  the  deceased  had  owned  a  blanket,  any  prisoner  might 
sew  it  around  the  corpse ;  and  then  it  was  lowered,  with 
a  rope  tied  round  the  middle,  down  the  side  of  the  ship 
into  a  boat.  Some  of  the  prisoners  were  allowed  to  go 
on  shore  under  a  guard  to  perform  the  labor  of  inter- 
ment. In  a  bank  near  the  Wallabout,  a  hole  was  exca- 
vated in  the  sand,  in  which  the  body  was  put,  then 
slightly  covered.  Many  bodies  would,  in  a  few  days 
after  this  mockery  of  a  burial,  be  exposed  nearly  bare 
by  the  action  of  the  elements." 

Such  was,  indeed,  the  end  of  many  of  the  most  gallant 
/of  the  Revolutionary  privateersmen ;  but  squalid  &nd 
cruel  as  was  the  fate  of  these  unfortunates,  it  had  no 
effect  in  deterring  others  from  seeking  fortune  in  the  same 
calling.  In  1775-76  there  were  commissioned  136  ves- 
sels, with  1360  guns ;  in  1777,  73  vessels,  with  730  guns; 


1 66  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

in  1778,  115  privateers,  with  a  total  of  1150  guns;  in 
1779,  167  vessels,  with  2505  guns ;  in  1780,  228  vessels, 
with  3420  guns;  in  1781,  449  vessels,  with  6735  (the 
high- water  mark)  ;  and  in  1782,  323  vessels,  with  4845 
guns.  Moreover,  the  vessels  grew  in  size  and  efficiency, 
until  toward  the  latter  end  of  the  war  they  were  in  fact 
well-equipped  war-vessels,  ready  to  give  a  good  account 
of  themselves  in  a  fight  with  a  British  frigate,  or  even 
to  engage  a  shore  battery  and  cut  out  prizes  from  a 
hostile  harbor.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  striking  evidence  of  the 
gallantry  and  the  patriotism  of  the  privateersmen  that 
they  did  not  seek  to  evade  battle  with  the  enemy's  armed 
forces.  Their  business  was,  of  course,  to  earn  profits 
for  the  merchants  who  had  fitted  them  out,  and  profits 
were  most  easily  earned  by  preying  upon  inferior  or  de- 
fenseless vessels.  But  the  spirit  of  the  war  was  strong 
upon  many  of  them,  and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
the  privateers  were  handled  as  gallantly  and  accepted 
unfavorable  odds  in  battle  as  readily  as  could  any  men- 
of-war.  Their  ravages  upon  British  commerce  plunged 
all  commercial  England  into  woe.  The  war  had  hardly 
proceeded  two  years  when  it  was  formally  declared  in 
the  House  of  Commons  that  the  losses  to  American  pri- 
vateers amounted  to  seven  hundred  and  thirty-three 
ships,  of  a  value  of  over  $11,000,000.  Mr.  Maclay  esti- 
mates from  this  that  "our  amateur  man-of-war's  men 
averaged  more  than  four  prizes  each/'  while  some  took 
twenty  and  one  ship  twenty-eight  in  a  single  cruise. 
Nearly  eleven  hundred  prisoners  were  taken  with  the 
captured  ships.  While  there  are  no  complete  figures  for 
the  whole  period  of  the  war  obtainable,  it  is  not  to  be 
believed  that  quite  so  high  a  record  was  maintained,  for 
dread  of  privateers  soon  drove  British  shipping  into  their 
harbors,  whence  they  put  forth,  if  at  all,  under  the  pro- 


MERCHANT   MARINE  167 

tection  of  naval  convoys.  Nevertheless,  the  number  of 
captures  must  have  continued  great  for  some  years ;  for, 
as  is  shown  by  the  foregoing  figures,  the  spoils  were 
sufficiently  attractive  to  cause  a  steady  increase  in  the 
number  of  privateers  until  the  last  year  of  the  war. 

There  followed  dull  times  for  the  privateersmen. 
Most  of  them  returned  to  their  ordinary  avocations  of 
sea  or  shore — became  peaceful  sailors,  or  fishermen,  or 
ship-builders,  or  farmers  once  again.  But  in  so  great 
a  body  of  men  who  had  lived  sword  in  hand  for  years, 
and  had  fattened  on  the  spoils  of  the  commerce  of  a  great 
nation,  it  was  inevitable  that  there  should  be  many  ut- 
terly unable  to  return  to  the  humdrum  life  of  honest  in- 
dustry. Many  drifted  down  to  that  region  of  romance 
and  outlawry,  dear  to  the  heart  of  the  romantic  boy,  the 
Spanish  Main,  and  there,  as  pirates  in  a  small  way  and 
as  buccaneers,  pursued  the  predatory  life.  For  a  time 
the  war  which  sprung  up  between  England  and  France 
seemed  to  promise  these  turbulent  spirits  congenial  and 
lawful  occupation.  France,  it  will  be  remembered,  sent 
the  Citizen  Genet  over  to  the  United  States  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  supposed  gratitude  of  the  American  peo- 
ple for  aid  during  the  Revolution  to  fit  out  privateers 
and  to  make  our  ports  bases  of  operation  against  the 
British.  It  must  be  admitted  that  Genet  would  have  had 
an  easy  task,  had  he  had  but  the  people  to  reckon  with. 
He  found  privateering  veterans  by  the  thousand  eager 
to  take  up  that  manner  of  life  once  more.  In  all  the 
seacoast  towns  were  merchants  quite  as  ready  for  profit- 
able ventures  in  privateering  under  the  French  flag  as 
under  their  own,  provided  they  could  be  assured  of  im- 
munity from  governmental  prosecution.  And,  finally,  he 
found  the  masses  of  the  people  fired  with  enthusiasm 
for  the  principles  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  eager 


168  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

to  show  sympathy  for  a  people  who,  like  themselves,  had 
thrown  off  the  yoke  of  kings.  The  few  privateers  that 
Minister  Genet  fitted  out  before  President  Washington 
became  aroused  to  his  infraction  of  the  principles  of  neu- 
trality were  quickly  manned,  and  began  sending  in  prizes 
almost  before  they  were  out  of  sight  of  the  American 
shore.  The  crisis  came,  however,  when  one  of  these 
ships  actually  captured  a  British  merchantman  in  Dela- 
ware Bay.  Then  the  administration  made  a  vigorous 
protest,  demanded  the  release  of  the  vessels  taken,  ar- 
rested two  American  sailors  who  had  shipped  on  the 
privateer,  and  broke  up  at  once  the  whole  project  of  the 
Frenchman.  It  was  a  critical  moment  in  our  national 
history,  for,  between  France  and  England  abroad,  the 
Federalist  and  Republican  at  home,  the  President  had 
to  steer  a  course  beset  with  reefs.  The  maritime  com- 
munity was  not  greatly  in  sympathy  with  his  suppression 
of  the  French  minister's  plans,  and  with  some  reason,  for 
British  privateers  had  been  molesting  our  vessels  all 
along  our  coasts  and  distant  waters.  It  was  a  time  when 
no  merchant  could  tell  whether  the  stout  ship  he  had 
sent  out  was  even  then  discharging  her  cargo  at  her 
destination,  or  tied  up  as  a  prize  in  some  British  port. 
We  Americans  are  apt  to  regard  with  some  pride  Wash- 
ington's stout  adherence  to  the  most  rigid  letter  of  the 
law  of  neutrality  in  those  troublous  times,  and  our  his- 
torians have  been  at  some  pains  to  impress  us  with  the 
impropriety  of  Jefferson's  scarcely  concealed  liking  for 
France ;  but  the  fact  is  that  no  violation  of  the  neutrality 
law  which  Genet  sought  was  more  glaring  than  those 
continually  committed  by  Great  Britain,  and  which  our 
Government  failed  to  resent.  In  time  France,  moved 
partly  by  pique  because  of  our  refusal  to  aid  her,  and 
partly  by  contempt  for  a  nation  that  failed  to  protect  its 


MERCHANT   MARINE  169 

ships  against  British  aggression,  began  itself  to  prey 
upon  our  commerce.  Then  the  state  of  our  maritime 
trade  was  a  dismal  one.  Our  ships  were  the  prey  of  both 
France  and  England ;  but  since  we  were  neutral,  the  right 
of  fitting  out  privateers  of  our  own  was  denied  our  ship- 
ping interests.  We  were  ground  between  the  upper  and 
nether  millstones. 

But,  as  so  often  happens,  persecution  bred  the  spirit 
and  created  the  weapons  for  its  correction.  When  it  was 
found  that  every  American  vessel  was  the  possible  spoil 
of  any  French  or  English  cruiser  or  privateer  that  she 
might  encounter;  that  our  Government  was  impotent  to 
protect  its  seamen ;  that  neither  our  neutrality  rights  nor 
the  neutrality  of  ports  in  which  our  vessels  lay  com- 
manded the  respect  of  the  two  great  belligerents,  the 
Yankee  shipping  merchants  set  about  meeting  the  situa- 
tion as  best  they  might.  They  did  not  give  up  their  effort 
to  secure  the  world's  trade — that  was  never  an  American 
method  of  procedure.  But  they  built  their  ships  so  as 
to  be  able  to  run  away  from  anything  they  might  meet ; 
and  they  manned  and  armed  them  so  as  to  fight^if  fight- 
ing became  necessary.  So  the  American  merchantman  be- 
came a  long,  sharp,  clipper-built  craft  that  could  show  her 
heels  to  almost  anything  afloat;  moderate  of  draft,  so 
that  she  could  run  into  lagoons  and  bays  where  no  war- 
ship could  follow.  They  mounted  from  four  to  twelve 
guns,  and  carried  an  armory  of  rifles  and  cutlasses  which 
their  men  were  well  trained  to  handle.  Accordingly, 
when  the  depredations  of  foreign  nations  became  such 
as  could  not  longer  be  borne,  and  after  President  Jeffer- 
son's plan  of  punishing  Europe  for  interfering  with  our 
commerce  by  laying  an  embargo  which  kept  our  ships  at 
home  had  failed,  war  was  declared  with  England;  and 
from  every  port  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard  privateers — 


1 70  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

ships  as  fit  for  their  purpose  as  though  specially  built  for 
it — swarmed  forth  seeking  revenge  and  spoils.  Their 
very  names  told  of  the  reasons  of  the  American  mer- 
chantmen for  complaint — the  reasons  why  they  rejoiced 
that  they  were  now  to  have  their  turn.  There  were  the 
"Orders-in-Council,"  the  "Right-of-Search,"  the  "Fair- 
trader,"  the  "Revenge."  Some  were  mere  pilot-boats, 
with  a  Long  Tom  amidships  and  a  crew  of  sixty  men; 
others  were  vessels  of  300  tons,  with  an  armament  and 
crew  like  a  man-of-war.  Before  the  middle  of  July, 
1812,  sixty-five  such  privateers  had  sailed,  and  the  Brit- 
ish merchantmen  were  scudding  for  cover  like  a  covey 
of  frightened  quail. 

The  War  of  1812  was  won,  so  far  as  it  was  won  at 
all,  on  the  ocean.  In  the  land  operations  from  the  very 
beginning  the  Americans  came  off  second  best;  and  the 
one  battle  of  importance  in  which  they  were  the  victors 
— the  battle  of  New  Orleans — was  without  influence  upon 
the  result,  having  been  fought  after  the  treaty  of  peace 
had  been  signed  at  Ghent.  But  on  the  ocean  the  honors 
were  all  taken  by  the  Americans,  and  no  small  share  of 
these  honors  fell  to  the  private  armed  navy  of  priva- 
teers. As  the  war  progressed  these  vessels  became  in 
type  more  like  the  regular  sloop-of-war,  for  the  earlier 
craft,  while  useful  before  the  British  began  sending  out 
their  merchantmen  under  convoy,  proved  to  be  too  small 
to  fight  and  too  light  to  escape  destruction  from  one 
well-aimed  broadside.  The  privateer  of  1813  was  usu- 
ally about  115  to  120  feet  long  on  the  spar-deck,  31  feet 
beam,  and  rigged  as  a  brig  or  ship.  They  were  always 
fast  sailers,  and  notable  for  sailing  close  to  the  wind. 
While  armed  to  fight,  if  need  be,  that  was  not  their  pur- 
pose, and  a  privateersman  who  gained  the  reputation 
among  owners  of  being  a  fighting  captain  was  likely  to 


MERCHANT   MARINE  171 

go  long  without  a  command.  Accordingly,  these  vessels 
were  lightly  built  and  over-rigged  (according  to  the  ideas 
of  British  naval  construction),  for  speed  was  the  great 
desideratum.  They  were  at  once  the  admiration  and  the 
envy  of  the  British,  who  imitated  their  models  without 
success  and  tried  to  utilize  them  for  cruisers  when  cap- 
tured, but  destroyed  their  sailing  qualities  by  altering 
their  rig  and  strengthening  their  hulls  at  the  expense 
of  lightness  and  symmetry. 

I  have  already  referred  to  Michael  Scott's  famous  story 
of  sea  life,  "Tom  Cringle's  Log,"  which,  though  in  form 
a  work  of  fiction,  contains  so  many  accounts  of  actual 
happenings,  and  expresses  so  fully  the  ideas  of  the  Brit- 
ish naval  officer  of  that  time,  that  it  may  well  be  quoted 
in  a  work  of  historical  character.  Tom  Cringle,  after 
detailing  with  a  lively  description  the  capture  of  a  Yankee 
privateer,  says  that  she  was  assigned  to  him  for  his  next 
command.  He  had  seen  her  under  weigh,  had  admired 
her  trim  model,  her  tapering  spars,  her  taut  cordage,  and 
the  swiftness  with  which  she  came  about  and  reached  to 
windward.  He  thus  describes  the  change  the  British 
outfitters  made  in  her: 

"When  I  had  last  seen  her  she  was  the  most  beautiful  little 
craft,  both  in  hull  and  rigging,  that  ever  delighted  the  eyes  of 
a  sailor;  but  the  dock-yard  riggers  and  carpenters  had  fairly 
bedeviled  her — at  least  so  far  as  appearances  went.  First,  they 
had  replaced  the  light  rail  on  her  gunwale  by  heavy,  solid  bul- 
warks four  feet  high,  surmounted  by  hammock  nettings  at  least 
another  foot;  so  that  the  symmetrical  little  vessel,  that  formerly 
floated  on  the  foam  light  as  a  seagull,  now  looked  like  a  clumsy, 
dish-shaped  Dutch  dogger.  Her  long,  slender  wands  of  masts, 
which  used  to  swing  about  as  if  there  were  neither  shrouds  nor 
stays  to  support  them,  were  now  as  taut  and  stiff  as  church- 
steeples,  with  four  heavy  shrouds  of  a  side,  and  stays,  and  back- 
stays, and  the  devil  knows  what  all." 


172  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  no  nation  ever  succeeded  in 
imitating  these  craft.  The  French  went  into  privateer- 
ing without  in  the  least  disturbing  the  equanimity  of 
the  British  shipowner;  but  the  day  the  Yankee  priva- 
teers took  the  sea  a  cry  went  up  from  the  docks  and 
warehouses  of  Liverpool  and  London  that  reverberated 
among  the  arches  of  Westminster  Hall.  The  newspapers 
were  loud  in  their  attacks  upon  the  admiralty  authorities. 
Said  the  Morning  Chronicle  in  1814: 

"That  the  whole  coast  of  Ireland,  from  Wexford  round  by 
Cape  Clear  to  Carrickfergus,  should  have  been  for  above  a 
month  under  the  unresisted  domination  of  a  few  petty  fly-by- 
nights  from  the  blockaded  ports  of  the  United  States  is  a  griev- 
ance equally  intolerable  and  disgraceful." 

This  wail  may  have  resulted  from  the  pleasantry  of 
one  Captain  Boyle,  of  the  privateer  "Chasseur,"  a  famous 
Baltimore  clipper,  mounting  sixteen  guns,  with  a  com- 
plement of  one  hundred  officers,  seamen,  and  marines. 
Captain  Boyle,  after  exhausting,  as  it  seemed  to  him, 
the  possibilities  of  the  West  Indies  for  excitement  and 
profit,  took  up  the  English  channel  for  his  favorite 
cruising-ground.  One  of  the  British  devices  of  that  day 
for  the  embarrassment  of  an  enemy  was  what  is  called 
a  "paper  blockade."  That  is  to  say,  when  it  appeared 
that  the  blockading  fleet  had  too  few  vessels  to  make 
the  blockade  really  effective  by  watching  each  port,  the 
admiral  commanding  would  issue  a  proclamation  that 
such  and  such  ports  were  in  a  state  of  blockade,  and 
then  withdraw  his  vessels  from  those  ports;  but  still 
claim  the  right  to  capture  any  neutral  vessels  which  he 
might  encounter  bound  thither.  This  practise  is  now 
universally  interdicted  by  international  law,  which  de- 
clares that  a  blockade,  to  be  binding  upon  neutrals,  must 
be  effective.  But  in  those  days  England  made  her  own 


MERCHANT   MARINE  173 

international  law — for  the  sea,  at  any  rate — and  the 
paper  blockade  was  one  of  her  pet  weapons.  Captain 
Boyle  satirized  this  practise  by  drawing  up  a  formal 
proclamation  of  blockade  of  all  the  ports  of  Great  Britain 
and  Ireland,  and  sending  it  to  Lloyds,  where  it  was  actu- 
ally posted.  His  action  was  not  wholly  a  jest,  either,  for 
he  did  blockade  the  port  of  St.  Vincent  so  effectively  for 
five  days  that  the  inhabitants  sent  off  a  pitiful  appeal  to 
Admiral  Durham  to  send  a  frigate  to  their  relief. 

It  was  at  this  time,  too,  that  the  Annual  Register  re- 
corded as  "a  most  mortifying  reflection"  that,  with  a 
navy  of  more  than  one  thousand  ships  in  commission, 
"it  was  not  safe  for  a  British  vessel  to  sail  without  con- 
voy from  one  part  of  the  English  or  Irish  Channel  to 
another."  Merchants  held  meetings,  insurance  corpora- 
tions and  boards  of  trade  memorialized  the  government 
on  the  subject;  the  shipowners  and  merchants  of  Glas- 
gow, in  formal  resolutions,  called  the  attention  of  the 
admiralty  to  the  fact  that  "in  the  short  space  of  twenty- 
four  months  above  eight  hundred  vessels  have  been  cap- 
tured by  the  power  whose  maritime  strength  we  have 
hitherto  impolitically  held  in  contempt."  It  was,  indeed, 
a  real  blockade  of  the  British  Isles  that  was  effected  by 
these  irregular  and  pigmy  vessels  manned  by  the  sailors 
of  a  nation  that  the  British  had  long  held  in  high  scorn. 
The  historian  Henry  Adams,  without  attempting  to  give 
any  complete  list  of  captures  made  on  the  British  coasts 
in  1814,  cites  these  facts: 

"The  'Siren,'  a  schooner  of  less  than  200  tons,  with  seven 
guns  and  seventy-five  men,  had  an  engagement  with  His  Maj- 
esty's cutter  'Landrail/  of  four  guns,  as  the  cutter  was  crossing 
the  Irish  sea  with  dispatches.  The  'Landrail'  was  captured,  after  a 
somewhat  smart  action,  and  was  sent  to  America,  but  was  re- 
captured on  the  way.  The  victory  was  not  remarkable,  but  the 
place  of  capture  was  very  significant,  and  it  happened  July  12 


174  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

only  a  fortnight  after  Blakely  captured  the  'Reindeer'  farther 
westward.  The  'Siren'  was  but  one  of  many  privateers  in  those 
waters.  The  'Governor  Tompkins'  burned  fourteen  vessels  suc- 
cessively in  the  British  Channel.  The  'Young  Wasp,'  of  Phila- 
delphia, cruised  nearly  six  months  about  the  coasts  of  England 
and  Spain,  and  in  the  course  of  West  India  commerce.  The 
'Harpy,'  of  Baltimore,  another  large  vessel  of  some  350  tons  and 
fourteen  guns,  cruised  nearly  three  months  off  the  coast  of  Ire- 
land, in  the  British  Channel,  and  in  the  Bay  of  Biscay,  and  re- 
turned safely  to  Boston  filled  with  plunder,  including,  as  was 
said,  upward  of  £100,000  in  British  treasury  notes  and  bills  of 
exchange.  The  'Leo,'  a  Boston  schooner  of  about  200  tons, 
was  famous  for  its  exploits  in  these  waters,  but  was  captured  at 
last  by  the  frigate  'Tiber,'  after  a  chase  of  about  eleven  hours. 
The  'Mammoth/  a  Baltimore  schooner  of  nearly  400  tons,  was 
seventeen  days  off  Cape  Clear,  the  southernmost  point  of  Ire- 
land. The  most  mischievous  of  all  was  the  'Prince  of  Neuf- 
chatel,'  New  York,  which  chose  the  Irish  Channel  as  its  favorite 
haunt,  where  during  the  summer  it  made  ordinary  coasting 
traffic  impossible." 

The  vessels  enumerated  by  Mr.  Adams  were  by  no 
means  among  the  more  famous  of  the  privateers  of  the 
War  of  1812;  yet  when  we  come  to  examine  their  rec- 
ords we  find  something  notable  or  something  romantic  in 
the  career  of  each — a  fact  full  of  suggestion  of  the  ex- 
citement of  the  privateersman's  life.  The  "Leo,"  for 
example,  at  this  time  was  under  command  of  Captain 
George  Coggeshall,  the  foremost  of  all  the  privateers, 
and  a  man  who  so  loved  his  calling  that  he  wrote  an  ex- 
cellent book  about  it.  Under  an  earlier  commander  she 
made  several  most  profitable  cruises,  and  when  pur- 
chased by  Coggeshall's  associates  was  lying  in  a  French 
port.  France  and  England  were  then  at  peace,  and  it 
may  be  that  the  French  remembered  the  way  in  which 
we  had  suppressed  the  Citizen  Genet.  At  any  rate,  they 
refused  to  let  Coggeshall  take  his  ship  out  of  the  harbor 


MERCHANT   MARINE  175 

with  more  than  one  gun — a  Long  Tom — aboard.  Noth- 
ing daunted,  he  started  out  with  this  armament,  to  which 
some  twenty  muskets  were  added,  on  a  privateering 
cruise  in  the  channel,  which  was  full  of  British  cruisers. 
Even  the  Long  Tom  proved  untrustworthy,  so  recourse 
was  finally  had  to  carrying  the  enemy  by  boarding;  and 
in  this  way  four  valuable  prizes  were  taken,  of  which 
three  were  sent  home  with  prize  crews.  But  a  gale  car- 
ried away  the  "Leo's"  foremast,  and  she  fell  a  prey  to  an 
English  frigate  which  happened  along  untimely. 

The  "Mammoth"  was  emphatically  a  lucky  ship.  In 
seven  weeks  she  took  seventeen  merchantmen,  paying 
for  herself  several  times  over.  Once  she  fought  a  lively 
battle  with  a  British  transport  carrying  four  hundred 
men,  but  prudently  drew  off.  True,  the  Government  was 
paying  a  bonus  of  twenty-five  dollars  a  head  for  prison- 
ers ;  but  cargoes  were  more  valuable.  Few  of  the  priva- 
teers troubled  to  send  in  their  prisoners,  if  they  could 
parole  and  release  them.  In  all,  the  "Mammoth"  cap- 
tured twenty-one  vessels,  and  released  on  parole  three 
hundred  prisoners. 

Of  all  the  foregoing  vessels,  the  "Prince  de  Neuf- 
chatel"  was  the  most  famous.  She  was  an  hermaphro- 
dite brig  of  310  tons,  mounting  17  guns.  She  was  a 
"lucky"  vessel,  several  times  escaping  a  vastly  superior 
force  and  bringing  into  port,  for  the  profit  of  her  owners, 
goods  valued  at  $3,000,000,  besides  large  quantities  of 
specie.  Her  historic  achievement,  however,  was  beatirig 
off  the  British  frigate  "Endymion,"  off  Nantucket,  one 
dark  night,  after  a  battle  concerning  which  a  British 
naval  historian,  none  too  friendly  to  Americans,  wrote: 
"So  determined  and  effective  a  resistance  did  great 
credit  to  the  American  captain  and  his  crew."  The  pri- 
vateer had  a  prize  in  tow,  by  which,  of  course,  her  move- 


176  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

ments  were  much  hampered,  for  her  captain  was  not 
inclined  to  save  himself  at  the  expense  of  his  booty.  But, 
more  than  this,  she  had  thirty-seven  prisoners  aboard, 
while  her  own  crew  was  sorely  reduced  by  manning 
prizes.  The  night  being  calm,  the  British  attempted  to  take 
the  ship  by  boarding  from  small  boats,  for  what  reason 
does  not  readily  appear,  since  the  vessels  were  within 
range  of  each  other,  and  the  frigate's  superior  metal 
could  probably  have  reduced  the  Americans  to  subjection. 
Instead,  however,  of  opening  fire  with  his  broadside,  the 
enemy  sent  out  boarding  parties  in  five  boats.  Their 
approach  was  detected  on  the  American  vessel,  and  a 
rapid  fire  with  small  arms  and  cannon  opened  upon  them, 
to  which  they  paid  no  attention,  but  pressed  doggedly 
on.  In  a  moment  the  boats  surrounded  the  privateer — 
one  on  each  bow,  one  on  each  side,  and  one  under  the 
stern — and  the  boarders  began  to  swarm  up  the  sides 
like  cats.  It  was  a  bloody  hand-to-hand  contest  that  fol- 
lowed, in  which  every  weapon,  from  cutlass  and  clubbed 
musket  down  to  bare  hands,  was  employed.  Heavy  shot, 
which  had  been  piled  up  in  readiness  on  deck,  were 
thrown  into  the  boats  in  an  effort  to  sink  them.  Hun- 
dreds of  loaded  muskets  were  ranged  along  the  rail,  so 
that  the  firing  was  not  interrupted  to  reload.  Time  and 
again  the  British  renewed  their  efforts  to  board,  but  were 
hurled  back  by  the  American  defenders.  A  few  who 
succeeded  in  reaching  the  decks  were  cut  down  before 
they  had  time  to  profit  by  their  brief  advantage.  Once 
only  did  it  seem  that  the  ship  was  in  danger.  Then  the 
assailants,  who  outnumbered  the  Americans  four  to  one, 
had  reached  the  deck  over  the  bows  in  such  numbers 
that  they  were  gradually  driving  the  defenders  aft. 
Every  moment  more  men  came  swarming  over  the  side ; 
and  as  the  Americans  ran  from  all  parts  of  the  ship  to 


IK    THKY    KKTKKATKI)    KARTHKR    HK    Wot  I.I»    BLOW    UP    THK    SHU' 


MERCHANT   MARINE  177 

meet  and  overpower  those  who  had  already  reached  the 
deck,  new  ways  were  opened  for  others  to  clamber 
aboard.  The  situation  was  critical ;  but  was  saved  by 
Captain  Ordronaux  by  a  desperate  expedient,  and  one 
which  it  is  clear  would  have  availed  nothing  had  not  his 
men  known  him  for  a  man  of  fierce  determination,  ready 
to  fulfil  any  desperate  threat.  Seizing  a  lighted  match 
from  one  of  the  gunners,  he  ran  to  the  hatch  immediately 
over  the  magazine,  and  called  out  to  his  men  that  if 
they  retreated  farther  he  would  blow  up  the  ship,  its  de- 
fenders, and  its  assailants.  The  men  rallied.  They 
swung  a  cannon  in  board  so  that  it  commanded  the  deck, 
and  swept  away  the  invaders  with  a  storm  of  grape.  In 
a  few  minutes  the  remaining  British  were  driven  back 
to  their  boats.  The  battle  had  lasted  less  than  half  an 
hour  when  the  British  called  for  quarter,  the  smoke 
cleared  away,  the  cries  of  combat  ceased,  and  both  parties 
were  able  to  count  their  losses.  The  crew  of  the  privateer 
had  numbered  thirty-seven,  of  wtiom  seven  were  killed 
and  twenty-four  wounded.  The  British  had  advanced 
to  the  attack  with  a  force  of  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
eight,  in  five  boats.  Three  of  the  boats  drifted  away 
empty,  one  was  sunk,  and  one  was  captured.  Of  the 
attacking  force  not  one  escaped ;  thirty  were  made  prison- 
ers, many  of  them  sorely  wounded,  and  the  rest  were 
either  killed  or  swept  away  by  the  tide  and  drowned.  The 
privateers  actually  had  more  prisoners  than  they  had  men 
of  their  own.  Some  of  the  prisoners  were  kept  towing  in  a 
launch  at  the  stern,  and,  by  way  of  strategy,  Captain 
Ordronaux  set  two  boys  to  playing  a  fife  and  drum  and 
stamping  about  in  a  sequestered  part  of  his  decks  as 
though  he  had  a  heavy  force  aboard.  Only  by  sending 
the  prisoners  ashore  under  parole  was  the  danger  of  an 
uprising  among  the  captives  averted. 


i;8  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

In  the  end  the  "Prince  de  Neufchatel"  was  captured 
by  a  British  squadron,  but  only  after  a  sudden  squall  had 
carried  away  several  of  her  spars  and  made  her  helpless. 

As  the  war  progressed  it  became  the  custom  of 
British  merchants  to  send  out  their  ships  only  in  fleets, 
convoyed  by  one  or  two  men-of-war,  a  system  that,  of 
course,  could  be  adopted  only  by  nations  very  rich  in 
war-ships.  The  privateers'  method  of  meeting  this  was 
to  cruise  in  couples,  a  pair  of  swift,  light  schooners,  hunt- 
ing the  prize  together.  When  the  convoy  was  encoun- 
tered, both  would  attack,  picking  out  each  its  prey.  The 
convoys  were  usually  made  up  with  a  man-of-war  at  the 
head  of  the  column,  and  as  this  vessel  would  make  sail 
after  one  of  the  privateers,  the  other  would  rush  in  at 
some  point  out  of  range,  and  cut  out  its  prize.  When  the 
British  began  sending  out  two  ships  of  war  with  each 
convoy,  the  privateers  cruised  in  threes,  and  the  same 
tactics  were  observed. 

But  the  richest  prizes  won  by  the  privateer  were  the 
single  going  ships,  called  "running  ships,"  that  were 
prepared  to  defend  themselves,  and  scorned  to  wait  for 
convoy.  These  were  generally  great  packets  trading  to 
the  Indies,  whose  cargoes  were  too  valuable  to  be  de- 
layed until  some  man-of-war  could  be  found  for  their 
protection.  They  were  heavily  armed,  often,  indeed, 
equaling  a  frigate  in  their  batteries  and  the  size  of  their 
crews.  But,  although  to  attack  one  of  these  meant  a 
desperate  fight,  the  Yankee  privateer  always  welcomed  the 
chance,  for  besides  a  valuable  cargo,  they  were  apt  to 
carry  a  considerable  sum  in  specie.  The  capture  of  one 
of  these  vessels,  too,  was  the  cause  of  annoyance  to  the 
enemy  disproportionate  to  even  their  great  value  to  their 
captors,  fro  they  not  only  carried  the  Royal  Mail,  but  were 
usually  the  agencies  by  which  the  dispatches  of  the  British 


MERCHANT   MARINE 


179 


general  were  forwarded.  Mail  and  dispatches,  alike,  were 
promptly  thrown  overboard  by  their  captors. 

In  the  diary  of  a  privateersman  of  Revolutionary 
days  is  to  be  found  the  story  of  the  capture  of  an  India- 
man  which  may  well  be  reprinted  as  typical. 

"As  the  fog  cleared  up,  we  perceived  her  to  be  a 
large  ship  under  English  colors,  to  the  windward,  stand- 
ing athwart  our  starboard  bow.  As  she  came  down  upon 


"I  THINK  SHE  IS  A  HEAVY  SHIP." 


us,  she  appeared  as  large  as  a  seventy-four ;  and  we  were 
not  deceived  respecting  her  size,  for  it  afterwards  proved 
that  she  was  an  old  East  Indiaman,  of  noo  tons  burden, 
fitted  out  as  a  letter  of  marque  for  the  West  India  trade, 
mounted  with  thirty-two  guns,  and  furnished  with  a  com- 
plement of  one  hundred  and  fifty  men.  She  was  called 
the  'Admiral  Duff/  commanded  by  Richard  Strange, 
from  St.  Christopher  and  St.  Eustachia,  laden  with  sugar 


i8o  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

and  tobacco,  and  bound  to  London.  I  was  standing  near 
our  first  lieutenant,  Mr.  Little,  who  was  calmly  examin- 
ing the  enemy  as  she  approached,  with  his  spy-glass, 
when  Captain  Williams  stepped  up  and  asked  his  opinion 
of  her.  The  lieutenant  applied  the  glass  to  his  eye  again 
and  took  a  deliberate  look  in  silence,  and  replied:  'I 
think  she  is  a  heavy  ship,  and  that  we  shall  have  some 
hard  fighting,  but  of  one  thing  I  am  certain,  she  is  not 
a  frigate ;  if  she  were,  she  would  not  keep  yawing  and 
showing  her  broadsides  as  she  does;  she  would  show 
nothing  but  her  head  and  stern;  we  shall  have  the  ad- 
vantage of  her,  and  the  quicker  we  get  alongside  the 
better."  Our  captain  ordered  English  colors  to  be 
hoisted,  and  the  ship  to  be  cleared  for  action. 

"The  enemy  approached  'till  within  musket-shot  of 
us.  The  two  ships  were  so  near  to  each  other  that  we 
could  distinguish  the  officers  from  the  men;  and  I  par- 
ticularly noticed  the  captain  on  the  gangway,  a  noble- 
looking  man,  having  a  large  gold-laced  cocked  hat  on  his 
head,  and  a  speaking-trumpet  in  his  hand.  Lieutenant 
Little  possessed  a  powerful  voice,  and  he  was  directed  to 
hail  the  enemy;  at  the  same  time  the  quartermaster  was 
ordered  to  stand  ready  to  haul  down  the  English  flag  and 
to  hoist  up  the  American.  Our  lieutenant  took  his 
station  on  the  after  part  of  the  starboard  gangway,  and 
elevating  his  trumpet,  exclaimed :  'Hullo.  Whence  come 
you?" 

"  'From  Jamaica,  bound  to  London/  was  the  answer. 

'  'What  is  the  ship's  name  ?'  inquired  the  lieutenant. 

"The  'Admiral  Duff," '  was  the  reply. 

"The  English  captain  then  thought  it  his  turn  to  in- 
terrogate, and  asked  the  name  of  our  ship.  Lieutenant 
Little,  in  order  to  gain  time,  put  the  trumpet  to  his  ear, 
pretending  not  to  hear  the  question.  During  the  short 


MERCHANT   MARINE  181 

interval  thus  gained,  Captain  Williams  called  upon  the 
gunner  to  ascertain  how  many  guns  could  be  brought 
to  bear  upon  the  enemy.  'Five/  was  the  answer.  'Then 
fire,  and  shift  the  colors/  were  the  orders.  The  cannons 
poured  forth  their  deadly  contents,  and,  with  the  first 
flash,  the  American  flag  took  the  place  of  the  British  en- 
sign at  our  masthead. 

"The  compliment  was  returned  in  the  form  of  a  full 
broadside,  and  the  action  commenced.  I  was  stationed 
on  the  edge  of  the  quarter-deck,  to  sponge  and  load  a 
six-pounder;  this  position  gave  me  a  fine  opportunity  to 
see  the  whole  action.  Broadsides  were  exchanged  with 
great  rapidity  for  nearly  an  hour;  our  fire,  as  we  after- 
ward ascertained,  produced  a  terrible  slaughter  among 
the  enemy,  while  our  loss  was  as  yet  trifling.  I  happened 
to  be  looking  for  a  moment  toward  the  main  deck,  when 
a  large  shot  came  through  our  ship's  side  and  killed  a 
midshipman.  At  this  moment  a  shot  from  one  of  our 
marines  killed  the  man  at  the  wheel  of  the  enemy's  ship, 
and,  his  place  not  being  immediately  supplied,  she  was 
brought  alongside  of  us  in  such  a  manner  as  to  bring  her 
bowsprit  directly  across  our  forecastle.  Not  knowing 
the  cause  of  this  movement,  we  supposed  it  to  be  the  in- 
tention of  the  enemy  to  board  us.  Our  boarders  were 
ordered  to  be  ready  with  their  pikes  to  resist  any  such 
attempt,  while  our  guns  on  the  main  deck  were  sending 
death  and  destruction  among  the  crew  of  the  enemy. 
Their  principal  object  now  seemed  to  be  to  get  liberated 
from  us,  and  by  cutting  away  some  of  their  rigging,  they 
were  soon  clear,  and  at  the  distance  of  a  pistol  shot. 

"The  action  was  then  renewed,  with  additional  fury; 
broadside  for  broadside  continued  with  unabated  vigor; 
at  times,  so  near  to  each  other  that  the  muzzles  of  our 
guns  came  almost  in  contact,  then  again  at  such  a  dis- 


1 82  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

tance  as  to  allow  of  taking  deliberate  aim.  The  contest 
was  obstinately  continued  by  the  enemy,  although  we 
could  perceive  that  great  havoc  was  made  among  them, 
and  that  it  was  with  much  difficulty  that  their  men  were 
compelled  to  remain  at  their  quarters.  A  charge  of  grape- 
shot  came  in  at  one  of  our  portholes,  which  dangerously 
wounded  four  or  five  of  our  men,  among  whom  was  our 
third  lieutenant,  Mr.  Little,  brother  to  the  first. 

"The  action  had  now  lasted  about  an  hour  and  a  half, 
and  the  fire  from  the  enemy  began  to  slacken,  when  we 
suddenly  discovered  that  all  the  sails  on  her  mainmast 
were  enveloped  in  a  blaze.  Fire  spread  with  amazing 
rapidity,  and,  running  down  the  after  rigging,  it  soon 
communicated  with  her  magazine,  when  her  whole  stern 
was  blown  off,  and  her  valuable  cargo  emptied  into  the 
sea.  Our  enemy's  ship  was  now  a  complete  wreck, 
though  she  still  floated,  and  the  survivors  were  endeavor- 
ing to  save  themselves  in  the  only  boat  that  had  escaped 
the  general  destruction.  The  humanity  of  our  captain 
urged  him  to  make  all  possible  exertions  to  save  the  mis- 
erable wounded  and  burned  wretches,  who  were  strug- 
gling for  their  lives  in  the  water.  The  ship  of  the  enemy 
was  greatly  our  superior  in  size,  and  lay  much  higher 
out  of  the  water  Our  boats  had  been  exposed  to  his  fire, 
as  they  were  placed  on  spars  between  the  fore  and  main- 
masts during  the  action,  and  had  suffered  considerable 
damage.  The  carpenters  were  ordered  to  repair  them 
with  the  utmost  expedition,  and  we  got  them  out  in  season 
to  take  up  fifty-five  men,  the  greater  part  of  whom  had 
been  wounded  by  our  shot,  or  burned  when  the  powder- 
magazine  exploded.  Their  limbs  were  mutilated  by  all 
manner  of  wounds,  while  some  were  burned  to  such  a 
degree  that  the  skin  was  nearly  flayed  from  their  bodies. 
Our  surgeon  and  his  assistants  had  just  completed  the 


MERCHANT  MARINE  183 

task  of  dressing  the  wounds  of  our  own  crew,  and  then 
they  directed  their  attention  to  the  wounded  of  the  enemy. 
Several  of  them  suffered  the  amputation  of  their  limbs, 
five  of  them  died  of  their  wounds,  and  were  committed 
to  their  watery  graves.  From  the  survivors  we  learned 
that  the  British  commander  had  frequently  expressed  a 
desire  to  come  in  contact  with  a  'Yankee  frigate'  during 
his  voyage,  that  he  might  have  a  prize  to  carry  to  Lon- 
don. Poor  fellow.  He  little  thought  of  losing  his  ship 
and  his  life  in  an  engagement  with  a  ship  so  much  inferior 
to  his  own — with  an  enemy  upon  whom  he  looked  with 
so  much  contempt." 

But  most  notable  of  all  the  battles  fought  by  pri- 
vateersmen  in  the  War  of  1812,  was  the  defense  of  the 
brig  "General  Armstrong,"  in  the  harbor  of  Fayal,  in 
September,  1814.  This  famous  combat  has  passed  into 
history,  not  only  because  of  the  gallant  fight  made  by  the 
privateer,  but  because  the  three  British  men-of-war  to 
whom  she  gave  battle,  were  on  their  way  to  cooperate 
with  Packenham  at  New  Orleans,  and  the  delay  due  to 
the  injuries  they  received,  made  them  too  late  to  aid  in 
that  expedition,  and  may  have  thus  contributed  to  General 
Jackson's  success. 

The  "General  Armstrong"  had  always  been  a  lucky 
craft,  and  her  exploits  in  the  capture  of  merchantmen, 
no  less  than  the  daring  of  her  commander  in  giving  battle 
to  ships-of-war  which  he  encountered,  had  won  her  the 
peculiar  hate  of  the  British  navy.  At  the  very  beginning 
of  her  career,  when  in  command  of  Captain  Guy  R. 
Champlin,  she  fought  a  British  frigate  for  more  than  an 
hour,  and  inflicted  such  grave  damage  that  the  enemy  was 
happy  enough  to  let  her  slip  away  when  the  wind  fresh- 
ened. On  another  occasion  she  engaged  a  British  armed 
ship  of  vastly  superior  strength,  off  the  Surinam  River, 


184  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

and  forced  her  to  run  ashore.  Probably  the  most  valuable 
prize  taken  in  the  war  fell  to  her  guns — the  ship  "Queen," 
with  a  cargo  invoiced  at  £90,000.  Indeed,  such  had  been 
her  audacity,  and  so  many  her  successes,  that  the  British 
were  eager  for  her  capture  or  destruction,  above  that  of 
any  other  privateer. 

In  September,  1814,  the  "General  Armstrong,"  now 
under  command  of  Captain  Samuel  G.  Reid,  was  at 
anchor  in  the  harbor  at  Fayal,  a  port  of  Portugal,  when 
her  commander  saw  a  British  war-brig  come  nosing  her 
way  into  the  harbor.  Soon  after  another  vessel  ap- 
peared, and  then  a  third,  larger  than  the  first  two,  and 
all  flying  the  British  ensign.  Captain  Reid  immediately 
began  to  fear  for  his  safety.  It  was  true  that  he  was  in  a 
neutral  port,  and  under  the  law  of  nations  exempt  from 
attack,  but  the  British  had  never  manifested  that  extreme 
respect  for  neutrality  that  they  exacted  of  President 
Washingon  when  France  tried  to  fit  out  privateers  in  our 
ports.  More  than  once  they  had  attacked  and  destroyed 
our  vessels  in  neutral  ports,  and,  indeed,  it  seemed  that 
the  British  test  of  neutrality  was  whether  the  nation 
whose  flag  was  thus  affronted,  was  able  or  likely  to  resent 
it.  Portugal  was  not  such  a  nation. 

All  this  was  clear  to  Captain  Reid,  and  when  he  saw 
a  rapid  signaling  begun  between  the  three  vessels  of  the 
enemy,  he  felt  confident  that  he  was  to  be  attacked.  He 
had  already  discovered  that  the  strangers  were  the  74-gun 
ship  of  the  line  "Plantagenet,"  the  38-gun  frigate  "Rota," 
and  the  i8-gun  war-brig  "Carnation,"  comprising  a 
force  against  which  he  could  not  hope  to  win  a  victory. 
The  night  came  on  clear,  with  a  bright  moon,  and  as  the 
American  captain  saw  boats  from  the  two  smaller  ves- 
sels rallying  about  the  larger  one,  he  got  out  his  sweeps 
and  began  moving  his  vessel  inshore,  so  as  to  get  under 


MERCHANT  MARINE  185 

the  guns  of  the  decrepit  fort,  with  which  Portugal 
guarded  her  harbor.  At  this,  four  boats  crowded  with 
men,  put  out  from  the  side  of  the  British  ship,  and  made 
for  the  privateer,  seeing  which,  Reid  dropped  anchor  and 
put  springs  on  his  cables,  so  as  to  keep  his  broadside  to 
bear  on  the  enemy  as  they  approached.  Then  he  shouted 
to  the  British,  warning  them  to  keep  off,  or  he  would  fire. 
They  paid  no  attention  to  the  warning,  but  pressed  on, 
when  he  opened  a  brisk  fire  upon  them.  For  a  time 
there  was  a  lively  interchange  of  shots,  but  the  superior 
marksmanship  of  the  Americans  soon  drove  the  enemy 
out  of  range  with  heavy  casualties.  The  British  retreated 
to  their  ships  with  a  hatred  for  the  Yankee  privateer 
even  more  bitter  than  that  which  had  impelled  them  to 
the  lawless  attack,  and  a  fiercer  determination  for  her 
destruction. 

It  is  proper  to  note,  that  after  the  battle  was  fought, 
and  the  British  commander  had  calmly  considered  the 
possible  consequences  of  his  violation  of  the  neutrality 
laws,  he  attempted  to  make  it  appear  that  the  Americans 
themselves  were  the  aggressors.  His  plea,  as  made  in  a 
formal  report  to  the  admiralty,  was  that  he  had  sent  four 
boats  to  discover  the  character  of  the  American  vessel; 
that  they,  upon  hailing  her,  had  been  fired  upon  and  suf- 
fered severe  loss,  and  that  accordingly  he  felt  that  the  af- 
front to  the  British  flag  could  only  be  expiated  by  the  de- 
struction of  the  vessel.  The  explanation  was  not  even 
plausible,  for  the  British  commander,  elsewhere  in  his  re- 
port, acknowledged  that  he  was  perfectly  informed  as  to 
the  identity  of  the  vessel,  and  even  had  this  not  been  the 
case,  it  is  not  customary  to  send  four  boats  heavily  laden 
with  armed  men,  merely  to  dicover  the  character  of  a  ship 
in  a  friendly  port. 

The  withdrawal  of  the  British  boats  gave  Captain  Reid 


1 86 


THE   STORY   OF   OUR 


time  to  complete  the  removal  of  his  vessel  to  a  point 
underneath  the  guns  of  the  Portugese  battery.  This  gave 
him  a  position  better  fitted  for  defense,  although  his  hope 
that  the  Portuguese  would  defend  the  neutrality  of  their 
port,  was  destined  to  disappointment,  for  not  a  shot  was 
fired  from  the  battery. 

Toward  midnight  the  attack  was  resumed,  and  by  this 
time  the  firing  within  the  harbor  had  awakened  the  peo- 


"STBIVING  TO  REACH  HER  DECKS  AT  EVERY  POINT" 

pie  of  the  town,  who  crowded  down  to  the  shore  to 
see  the  battle.  The  British,  in  explanation  of  the  reverse 
which  they  suffered,  declared  that  all  the  Americans  in 
Fayal  armed  themselves,  and  from  the  shore  supple- 
mented the  fire  from  the  "General  Armstrong."  Captain 
Reid,  however,  makes  no  reference  to  this  assistance.  In 
all,  some  four  hundred  men  joined  in  the  second  at- 


MERCHANT  MARINE  187 

tack.  Twelve  boats  were  in  line,  most  of  them  with  a 
howitzer  mounted  in  the  bow.  The  Americans  used  their 
artillery  on  these  craft  as  they  approached,  and  inflicted 
great  damage  before  the  enemy  were  in  a  position  to 
board.  The  British  vessels,  though  within  easy  gun-fire, 
dared  not  use  their  heavy  cannon,  lest  they  should  injure 
their  own  men,  and  furthermore,  for  fear  that  the  shot 
would  fall  into  the  town.  The  midnight  struggle  was  a 
desperate  one,  the  enemy  fairly  surrounding  the  "General 
Armstrong,"  and  striving  to  reach  her  decks  at  every 
point.  But  though  greatly  outnumbered,  the  defenders 
were  able  to  maintain  their  position,  and  not  a  boarder 
succeeded  in  reaching  the  decks.  The  struggle  continued 
for  nearly  three-quarters  of  an  hour,  after  which  the 
British  again  drew  off.  Two  boats  filled  with  dead  and 
dying  men,  were  captured  by  the  Americans,  the  unhurt 
survivors  leaping  overboard  and  swimming  ashore.  The 
British  report  showed,  that  in  these  two  attacks  there 
were  about  one  hundred  and  forty  of  the  enemy  killed,and 
one  hundred  and  thirty  wounded.  The  Americans  had 
lost  only  two  killed  and  seven  wounded,  but  the  ship  was 
left  in  no  condition  for  future  defense.  Many  of  the 
guns  were  dismounted,  and  the  Long  Tom,  which  had 
been  the  mainstay  of  the  defense,  was  capsized.  Captain 
Reid  and  his  officers  worked  with  the  utmost  energy 
through  the  night,  trying  to  fit  the  vessel  for  a  renewal  of 
the  combat  in  the  morning,  but  at  three  o'clock  he  was 
called  ashore  by  a  note  from  the  American  consul.  Here 
he  was  informed  that  the  Portuguese  Governor  had  made 
a  personal  appeal  to  the  British  commander  for  a  cessa- 
tion of  the  attack,  but  that  it  had  been  refused,  with  the 
statement  that  the  vessel  would  be  destroyed  by  cannon- 
fire  from  the  British  ships  in  the  morning.  Against  an 
attack  of  this  sort  it  was,  of  course,  futile  for  the  "General 


i88  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

Armstrong"  to  attempt  to  offer  defense,  and  accordingly 
Captain  Reid  landed  his  men  with  their  personal  effects, 
and  soon  after  the  British  began  fire  in  the  morning, 
scuttled  the  ship  and  abandoned  her.  He  led  his  men 
into  the  interior,  seized  on  an  abandoned  convent,  and 
fortifying  it,  prepared  to  resist  capture.  No  attempt, 
however,  was  made  to  pursue  him,  the  British  comman- 
der contenting  himself  with  the  destruction  of  the  pri- 
vateer. For  nearly  a  week  the  British  ships  were  delayed 
in  the  harbor,  burying  their  dead  and  making  repairs. 
When  they  reached  New  Orleans,  the  army  which  they 
had  been  sent  to  reenforce,  had  met  Jackson  on  the  plains 
of  Chalmette,  and  had  been  defeated.  The  price  paid  for 
the  "General  Armstrong"  was,  perhaps,  the  heaviest  of 
the  war.  The  British  commander  seemed  to  appreciate 
this  fact,  for  every  effort  was  made  to  keep  the  news  of 
the  battle  from  becoming  known  in  England,  and  when 
complete  concealment  was  no  longer  possible,  an  official 
report  was  given  out  that  minimized  the  British  loss, 
magnified  the  number  of  the  Americans,  and  totally  mis- 
stated the  facts  bearing  on  the  violation  of  the  neutrality 
of  the  Portuguese  port.  Captain  Reid,  however,  was 
made  a  hero  by  his  countrymen.  A  Portuguese  ship  took 
him  and  his  crew  to  Amelia  Island,  whence  they  made 
their  way  to  New  York.  Poughkeepsie  voted  him  a 
sword.  Richmond  citizens  gave  him  a  complimentary 
dinner,  at  which  were  drunk  such  toasts  'as :  "The  private 
cruisers  of  the  United  States — whose  intrepidity  has 
pierced  the  enemy's  channels  and  bearded  the  lion  in  his 
den";  "Neutral  Ports — whenever  the  tyrants  of  the 
ocean  dare  to  invade  these  sanctuaries,  may  they  meet 
with  an  'Essex'  and  an  'Armstrong'  " ;  and  "Captain  Reid 
— his  valor  has  shed  a  blaze  of  renown  upon  the  charac- 
ter of  our  seamen,  and  won  for  himself  a  laurel  of  eternal 


MERCHANT  MARINE  189 

bloom."  The  newspapers  of  the  times  rang  with  eulogies 
of  Reid,  and  anecdotes  of  his  seafaring  experiences.  But 
after  all,  as  McMaster  finely  says  in  his  history:  "The 
finest  compliment  of  all  was  the  effort  made  in  England 
to  keep  the  details  of  the  battle  from  the  public,  and  the 
false  report  of  the  British  commander." 

In  finally  estimating  the  effect  upon  the  American  for- 
tunes in  the  War  of  1812,  of  the  privateers  and  their 
work,  many  factors  must  be  taken  into  consideration.  At 
first  sight  it  would  seem  that  a  system  which  gave  the 
services  of  five  hundred  ships  and  their  crews  to  the 
task  of  annoying  the  British,  and  inflicting  damage  upon 
their  commerce  without  cost  to  the  American  Govern- 
ment, must  be  wholly  advantageous.  We  have  already 
seen  the  losses  inflicted  upon  British  commerce  by  our 
privateers  reflected  in  the  rapidly  increasing  cost  of 
marine  insurance.  While  the  statistics  in  the  possession 
of  the  Government  are  not  complete,  they  show  that 
twenty-five  hundred  vessels  at  least  were  captured  during 
the  War  of  1812  by  these  privately-owned  cruisers,  and 
there  can  be  no  shadow  of  a  doubt  that  the  loss  inflicted 
upon  British  merchants,  and  the  constant  state  of  appre- 
hension for  the  safety  of  their  vessels  in  which  they  were 
kept,  very  materially  aided  in  extending  among  them  a 
willingness  to  see  peace  made  on  almost  any  terms. 

But  this  is  the  other  side  of  the  story :  The  prime  pur- 
pose of  the  privateer  was  to  make  money  for  its  owners, 
its  officers,  and  its  crew.  The  whole  design  and  spirit 
of  the  calling  was  mercenary.  It  inflicted  damage  on  the 
enemy,  but  only  incidentally  to  earning  dividends  for  its 
participants.  If  Government  cruisers  had  captured  twen- 
ty-five hundred  British  vessels,  those  vessels  would  have 
been  lost  to  the  enemy  forever.  But  the  privateer,  seeking 
gains,  tried  to  send  them  into  port,  however  dangerous 


190  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

such  a  voyage  might  be,  and  accordingly,  rather  more 
than  a  third  of  them  were  recaptured  by  the  enemy.  We 
may  note  here  in  passing,  that  one  reason  why  the  so- 
called  Confederate  privateers  during  our  own  Civil  War, 
did  an  amount  of  damage  so  disproportionate  to  their 
numbers,  was  that  they  were  not,  in  fact,  privateers  at 
all.  They  were  commissioned  by  the  Confederate  Gov- 
ernment to  inflict  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  injury 
upon  northern  commerce,  and  accordingly,  when  Semmes 
or  Maffitt  captured  a  United  States  vessel,  he  burned  it 
on  the  spot.  There  was  no  question  of  profit  involved  in 
the  service  of  the  "Alabama,"  the  "Florida,"  or  the  "Shen- 
andoah,"  and  they  have  been  called  privateers  in  our  his- 
tories, mainly  because  Northern  writers  have  been  loath  to 
concede,  to  what  they  called  a  rebel  government,  the  right 
to  equip  and  commission  regular  men-of-war. 

But  to  return  to  the  American  privateers  of  1812. 
While,  as  I  have  pointed  out,  there  were  many  instances 
of  enormous  gains  being  made,  it  is  probable  that  the 
business  as  a  whole,  like  all  gambling  businesses  as  a 
whole,  was  not  profitable.  Some  ships  made  lucky  voy- 
ages, but  there  is  on  record  in  the  Navy  Department  a 
list  of  three  hundred  vessels  that  took  not  one  single 
prize  in  the  whole  year  of  1813.  The  records  of  Congress 
show  that,  as  a  whole,  the  business  was  not  remunerative, 
because  there  were  constant  appeals  from  people  interested. 
In  response  to  this  importunity,  Congress  at  one  time 
paid  a  bounty  of  twenty-five  dollars  a  head  for  all  pris- 
oners taken.  At  other  times  it  reduced  the  import  duties 
on  cargoes  captured  and  landed  by  privateers.  Indeed,  it 
is  estimated  by  a  careful  student,  that  the  losses  to  the 
Government  in  the  way  of  direct  expenditures  and  re- 
mission of  revenues  through  the  privateering  system, 
amounted  to  a  sum  sufficient  to  have  kept  twenty  sloops-of 


MERCHANT   MARINE  191 

war  on  the  sea  throughout  the  period  of  hostilities,  and 
there  is  little  doubt  that  such  vessels  could  have  actually 
accomplished  more  in  the  direction  of  harassing  the 
enemy  than  the  privateers.  A  very  grave  objection  to  the 
privateering  system,  however,  was  the  fact  that  the 
promise  of  profit  to  sailors  engaged  in  it  was  so  great, 
that  all  adventurous  men  flocked  into  the  service,  so  that  it 
became  almost  impossible  to  maintain  our  army  or  to 
man  our  ships.  I  have  already  quoted  George  Washing- 
ton's objections  to  the  practise  during  the  Revolution. 
During  the  War  of  1812,  some  of  our  best  frigates  were 
compelled  to  sail  half  manned,  while  it  is  even  declared 
that  the  loss  of  the  ''Chesapeake"  to  the  "Shannon"  was 
largely  due  to  the  fact  that  her  crew  were  discontented 
and  preparing,  as  their  time  of  service  was  nearly  up,  to 
quit  the  Government  service  for  privateering.  In  a  history 
of  Marblehead,  one  of  the  famous  old  seafaring  towns 
of  Massachusetts,  it  is  declared  that  of  nine  hundred 
men  of  that  town  who  took  part  in  the  war,  fifty-seven 
served  in  the  army,  one  hundred  and  twenty  entered  the 
navy,  while  seven  hundred  and  twenty-six  shipped  on 
the  privateers.  These  figures  afford  a  fair  indication  of 
the  way  in  which  the  regular  branches  of  the  service 
suffered  by  the  competition  of  the  system  of  legalized 
piracy. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  ARCTIC  TRAGEDY— AMERICAN  SAILORS  IN  THE  FROZEN  DEEP 
—THE  SEARCH  FOR  SIR  JOHN  FRANKLIN— REASONS  FOR  SEEK- 
ING THE  NORTH  POLE — TESTIMONY  OF -SCIENTISTS  AND  EX- 
PLORERS—PERTINACITY OF  POLAR  VOYAGERS— DR.  KANE  AND 
DR.  HAYES — CHARLES  F.  HALL,  JOURNALIST  AND  EXPLORER- 
MIRACULOUS  ESCAPE  OF  His  PARTY— THE  ILL-FATED  "JEAN- 
NETTE"  EXPEDITION — SUFFERING  AND  DEATH  OF  DE  LONG  AND 
His  COMPANIONS— A  PITIFUL  DIARY— THE  GREELY  EXPEDI- 
TION—ITS CAREFUL  PLAN  AND  COMPLETE  DISASTER— WELLMAN 
AND  BALDWIN — PEARY  WINS  IN  THE  RACE  FOR  THE  POLE. 

A  CHAPTER  in  the  story  of  the  American  sailor, 
which  begun  full  an  hundred  years  ago,  was  com- 
pleted in  1909  by  the  discovery  of  the  North  Pole  by 
Captain  Peary  of  the  United  States  Navy.  This  was 
the  culmination  not  alone  of  a  lifetime  in  the  Arctic  by 
the  devoted  successful  explorer,  but  of  a  long  record  of 
gallant  effort  by  less  fortunate  Americans.  It  is  a  story 
of  calm  daring,  of  indomitable  pertinacity,  of  patient  en- 
durance of  the  most  cruel  suffering,  of  heroic  invitation 
to  and  acceptance  of  death.  The  men  of  the  merchant 
service  played  their  full  part  in  this  record  of  gal- 
lantry. 

In  the  private  office  of  the  President  of  the  United 
States  at  Washington,  stands  a  massive  oaken  desk.  It 
has  been  a  passive  factor  in  the  making  of  history,  for  at 
it  have  eight  presidents  sat,  and  papers  involving  almost 
the  life  of  the  nation,  have  received  the  executive  signa- 
ture upon  its  smooth  surface.  The  very  timbers  of  which 


194  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

it  is  built  were  concerned  in  the  making  of  history  of  an- 
other sort,  for  they  were  part  of  the  frame  of  the  stout 
British  ship  "Resolute,"  which,  after  a  long  search  in  the 
Polar  regions  for  the  hapless  Sir  John  Franklin — of 
whom  more  hereafter — was  deserted  by  her  crew  in  the 
Arctic  pack,  drifted  twelve  hundred  miles  in  the  ice,  and 
was  then  discovered  and  brought  back  home  as  good  as 
new  by  Captain  Buddington  of  the  stanch  American 
whaler,  "George  and  Henry."  The  sympathies  of  all  civil- 
ized peoples,  and  particularly  of  English-speaking  races, 
were  at  that  time  strongly  stirred  by  the  fate  of  Franklin 
and  his  brave  companions,  and  so  Congress  appropriated 
$40,000  for  the  purchase  of  the  vessel  from  the  salvors, 
and  her  repair.  Refitted  throughout,  she  was  sent  to 
England  and  presented  to  the  Queen  in  1856.  Years 
later,  when  broken  up,  the  desk  was  made  from  her  tim- 
bers and  presented  by  order  of  Victoria  to  the  President 
of  the  United  States,  who  at  that  time  was  Rutherford  B. 
Hayes.  It  stands  now  in  the  executive  mansion,  an  endur- 
ing memorial  of  one  of  the  romances  of  a  long  quest  full 
of  romance — the  search  for  the  North  Pole. 

In  all  ages,  the  minds  of  men  of  the  exploring  and 
colonizing  nations,  have  turned  toward  the  tropics  as  the 
region  of  fabulous  wealth,  the  field  for  profitable  ad- 
venture. "The  wealth  of  the  Ind,"  has  passed  into 
proverb.  Though  exploration  has  shown  that  it  is  the 
flinty  North  that  hides  beneath  its  granite  bosom  the 
richest  stores  of  mineral  wealth,  almost  four  centuries  of 
failure  and  disappointment  were  needed  to  rid  men's 
minds  of  the  notion  that  the  jungles  and  the  tropical 
forests  were  the  most  abundant  hiding-places  of  gold  and 
precious  stones.  The  wild  beauty  of  the  tropics,  the 
cloudless  skies,  the  tangled  thickets,  ever  green  and 
rustling  with  a  restless  animal  life,  the  content  and 


MERCHANT  MARINE  195 

amiability  of  the  natives,  combined  in  a  picture  irresisti- 
bly attractive  to  the  adventurer.  Surely  where  there  was 
so  much  beauty,  so  much  of  innocent  joy  in  life,  there 
must  be  the  fountain  of  perpetual  youth,  there  must  be 
gold,  and  diamonds,  and  sapphires — all  those  gewgaws, 
the  worship  of  which  shows  the  lingering  taint  of  bar- 
barism in  the  civilized  man,  and  for  which  the  English, 
Spanish,  and  Portuguese  adventurers  of  three  centuries 
ago,  were  ready  to  sacrifice  home  and,  family,  manhood, 
honor,  and  life. 

So  it  happened  that  in  the  early  days  of  maritime  ad- 
venture the  course  of  the  hardy  voyagers  was  toward 
the  tropics,  and  they  made  of  the  Spanish  Main  a  sea 
of  blood,  while  Pizzarro  and  Cortez,  and  after  them  the 
dreaded  buccaneers,  sacked  towns,  betrayed,  murdered, 
and  outraged,  destroyed  an  ancient  civilization  and  fairly 
blotted  out  a  people,  all  in  the  mad  search  for  gold.  Men 
only  could  have  been  guilty  of  such  crimes,  for  man 
along,  among  animals  endowed  with  life,  kills  for  the 
mere  lust  of  slaughter. 

And  yet,  man  alone  stands  ready  to  risk  his  life  for  an 
idea,  to  brave  the  most  direful  perils,  to  endure  the  most 
poignant  suffering  that  the  world's  store  of  knowledge 
may  be  increased,  that  science  may  be  advanced)  that  just 
one  more  fact  may  be  added  to  the  things  actually 
known.  If  the  record  of  man  in  the  tropics  has  been 
stained  by  theft,  rapine,  and  murder,  the  story  of  his 
long  struggle  with  the  Arctic  ice,  offers  for  his  redemp- 
tion a  series  of  pictures  of  self-sacrifice,  tenderness, 
honor,  courage,  and  piety.  No  hope  of  profit  drew  the 
seamen  of  all  maritime  nations  into  the  dismal  and  deso- 
late ice-floes  that  guard  the  frozen  North.  No  lust  for 
gold  impelled  them  to  brave  the  darkness,  the  cold,  and 
the  terrifying  silence  of  the  six-months  Arctic  night.  The 


196  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

men  who  have — thus  far  unsuccessfully — fought  with 
ice-bound  nature  for  access  to  the  Pole,  were  impelled 
only  by  honorable  emulation  and  scientific  zeal. 

The  earlier  Arctic  explorers  were  not,  it  is  true, 
searchers  for  the  North  Pole.  That  quest — which  has 
written  in  its  history  as  many  tales  of  heroism,  self-sacri- 
fice, and  patient  resignation  to  adversity,  as  the  poets 
have  woven  about  the  story  of  chivalry  and  the  search  for 
the  Holy  Grail — was  begun  only  in  the  middle  of  the 
last  century,  and  by  an  American.  But  for  three  hundred 
years  English,  Dutch,  and  Portuguese  explorers,  and  the 
stout-hearted  American  whalemen,  had  been  pushing 
further  and  further  into  the  frozen  deep.  The  explorers 
sought  the  "Northwest  Passage,"  or  a  water  route  around 
the  northern  end  of  North  America,  and  so  on  to  India 
and  the  riches  of  the  East.  Sir  John  Franklin,  in  the 
voyage  that  proved  his  last,  demonstrated  that  such  a 
passage  could  be  made,  but  not  for  any  practical  or  useful 
purpose.  After  him  it  was  abandoned,  and  geographical 
research,  and  the  struggle  to  reach  the  pole,  became  the 
motives  that  took  men  into  the  Arctic. 

"But  why,"  many  people  ask,  with  some  reason, 
"should  there  be  this  determined  search  for  the  North 
Pole.  What  good  will  come  to  the  world  with  its  dis- 
covery ?  Is  it  worth  while  to  go  on  year  after  year,  pour- 
ing out  treasure  and  risking  human  lives,  merely  that  any 
hardy  explorer  may  stand  at  an  imaginary  point  on  the 
earth's  surface  which  is  already  fixed  geographically  by 
scientists  ?" 

Let  the  scientists  and  the  explorers  answer,  for  to 
most  of  us  the  questions  do  not  seem  unreasonable. 

Naturally,  with  the  explorers'  love  for  adventure, 
eagerness  to  see  any  impressive  manifestations  of  nature's 
powers,  and  the  ambition  to  attain  a  spot  for  which  men 


MERCHANT   MARINE  197 

have  been  striving  for  half  a  century,  are  the  animating 
purposes.  So  we  find  Fridjof  Nansen,  who  for  a  time 
held  the  record  of  having  attained  the  "Furthest  North," 
writing  on  this  subject  to  an  enquiring  editor :  "When 
man  ceases  to  wish  to  know  and  to  conquer  every  foot  of 
the  earth,  which  was  given  him  to  live  upon  and  to  rule, 
then  will  the  decadence  of  the  race  begin.  Of  itself,  that 
mathematical  point  which  marks  the  northern  termination 
of  the  axis  of  our  earth,  is  of  no  more  importance  than 
any  other  point  within  the  unknown  polar  area ;  but  it  is 
of  much  more  importance  that  this  particular  point  be 
reached,  because  there  clings  about  it  in  the  imagination 
of  all  mankind,  such  fascination  that,  till  the  Pole  is  dis- 
covered, all  Arctic  research  must  be  affected,  if  not  over- 
shadowed, by  the  yearning  to  attain  it." 

George  W.  Melville,  chief  engineer  of  the  United 
States  Navy,  who  did  such  notable  service  in  the  Jeanette 
expedition  of  1879,  writes  in  words  that  stir  the  pulse : 

"Is  there  a  better  school  of  heroic  endeavor  than  the 
Arctic  zone  ?  It  is  something  to  stand  where  the  foot  of 
man  has  never  trod.  It  is  something  to  do  that  which  has 
defied  the  energy  of  the  race  for  the  last  twenty  years.  It 
is  something  to  have  the  consciousness  that  you  are 
adding  your  modicum  of  knowledge  to  the  world's  store. 
It  is  worth  a  year  of  the  life  of  a  man  with  a  soul  larger 
than  a  turnip,  to  see  a  real  iceberg  in  all  its  majesty  and 
grandeur.  It  is  worth  some  sacrifice  to  be  alone,  just 
once,  amid  the  awful  silence  of  the  Arctic  snows,  there  to 
communicate  with  the  God  of  nature,  whom  the  thought- 
ful man  finds  best  in  solitude  and  silence,  far  from  the 
haunts  of  men — alone  with  the  Creator." 

Thus  the  explorers.  The  scientists  look  less  upon  the 
picturesque  and  exciting  side  of  Arctic  exploration,  and 
more  upon  its  useful  ohases.  "It  helps  to  solve  useful 


198  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

problems  in  the  physics  of  the  world,"  wrote  Professor 
Todd  of  Amherst  college.  "The  meteorology  of  the 
United  States  to-day ;  perfection  of  theories  of  the  earth's 
magnetism,  requisite  in  conducting  surveys  and  navigat- 
ing ships;  the  origin  and  development  of  terrestrial 
fauna  and  flora ;  secular  variation  of  climate ;  behavior  of 
ocean  currents — all  these  are  fields  of  practical  investiga- 
tion in  which  the  phenomena  of  the  Arctic  and  Antarctic 
worlds  play  a  very  significant  role." 

Lieutenant  Maury,  whose  eminent  services  in  map- 
ping the  ocean  won  him  international  honors,  writes  of 
the  polar  regions : 

"There  icebergs  are  launched  and  glaciers  formed. 
There  the  tides  have  their  cradle,  the  whales  their  nursery. 
There  the  winds  complete  their  circuits,  and  the  currents 
of  the  sea  their  round  in  the  wonderful  system  of  inter- 
oceanic  circulation.  There  the  aurora  borealis  is  lighted 
up,  and  the  trembling  needle  brought  to  rest,  and  there, 
too,  in  the  mazes  of  that  mystic  circle,  terrestrial  forces 
of  occult  power,  and  vast  influence  upon  the  well-being  of 
men,  are  continually  at  play.  .  .  .  Noble  daring 
has  made  Arctic  ice  and  waters  classic  ground.  It  is  no 
feverish  excitement  nor  vain  ambition  that  leads  man 
there.  It  is  a  higher  feeling,  a  holier  motive,  a  desire  to 
look  into  the  works  of  creation,  to  comprehend  the 
economy  of  our  planet,  and  to  grow  wiser  and  better  by 
the  knowledge." 

Nor  can  it  be  said  fairly  that  the  polar  regions  have 
failed  to  repay,  in  actual  financial  profit,  their  persistent 
invasion  by  man.  It  is  estimated  by  competent  statisti- 
cians, that  in  the  last  two  centuries  no  less  than  two 
thousand  million  dollars'  worth  of  furs,  fish,  whale-oil, 
whalebone,  and  minerals,  have  been  taken  out  of  the  ice- 
bound seas. 


MERCHANT  MARINE  199 

The  full  story — at  once  sorrowful  and  stimulating — of 
Arctic  exploration,  can  not  be  told  here.  That  would 
require  volumes  rather  than  a  single  chapter.  Even  the 
part  played  in  it  by  Americans  can  be  sketched  in  outline 
only.  But  it  is  worth  remembering  that  the  systematic 
attack  of  our  countrymen  upon  the  Arctic  fortress,  began 
with  an  unselfish  and  humane  incentive.  In  1845  Sir 
John  Franklin,  a  gallant  English  seaman,  had  set  sail  with 
two  stout  ships  and  125  men,  to  seek  the  Northwest 
Passage.  Thereafter  no  word  was  heard  from  him,  until, 


"THEY  FELL  DOWN  AND  DIED  AS  THEY  WALKED" 

years  later,  a  searching  party  found  a  cairn  of  stones  on  a 
desolate,  ice-bound  headland,  and  in  it  a  faintly  written 
record,  which  told  of  the  death  of  Sir  John  and  twenty- 
four  of  his  associates.  We  know  now,  that  all  who  set 
out  on  this  ill-fated  expedition,  perished.  Struggling  to  the 
southward  after  abandoning  their  ships,  they  fell  one  by 
one,  and  their  lives  ebbed  away  on  the  cruel  ice.  "They 
fell  down  and  died  as  they  walked/'  said  an  old  Esquimau 
woman  to  Lieutenant  McClintock,  of  the  British  navy, 
who  sought  for  tidings  of  them,  and,  indeed,  her  report 


200  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

found  sorrowful  verification  in  the  skeletons  discovered 
years  afterward,  lying  face  downward  in  the  snow.  To 
the  last  man  they  died.  Think  of  the  state  of  that  last 
man — alone  in  the  frozen  wilderness!  An  eloquent 
writer,  the  correspondent  McGahan,  himself  no  stranger 
to  Arctic  pains  and  perils,  has  imagined  that  pitiful 
picture  thus : 

"One  sees  this  man  after  the  death  of  his  last  remain- 
ing companion,  all  alone  in  that  terrible  world,  gazing 
round  him  in  mute  despair,  the  sole  living  thing  in  that 
dark  frozen  universe.  The  sky  is  somber,  the  earth 
whitened  with  a  glittering  whiteness  that  chills  the  heart. 
His  clothing  is  covered  with  frozen  snow,  his  face  lean 
and  haggard,  his  beard  a  cluster  of  icicles.  The  setting 
sun  looks  back  to  see  the  last  victim  die.  He  meets  her 
sinister  gaze  with  a  steady  eye,  as  though  bidding  her 
defiance.  For  a  few  minutes  they  glare  at  each  other, 
then  the  curtain  is  drawn,  and  all  is  dark." 

As  fears  for  Franklin's  safety  deepened  into  certainty 
of  his  loss  with  the  passage  of  months  and  years,  a  multi- 
tude of  searching  expeditions  were  sent  out,  the  earlier 
ones  in  the  hope  of  rescuing  him ;  the  later  ones  with  the 
purpose  of  discovering  the  records  of  his  voyage,  which 
all  felt  sure  must  have  been  cached  at  some  accessible 
point.  Americans  took  an  active — almost  a  leading — part 
in  these  expeditions,  braving  in  them  the  same  perils 
which  had  overcome  the  stout  English  knight.  By  sea 
and  by  land  they  sought  him.  The  story  of  the  land  ex- 
peditions, though  full  of  interest,  is  foreign  to  the  purpose 
of  this  work,  and  must  be  passed  over  with  the  mere  note 
that  Charles  F.  Hall,  a  Cincinnati  journalist,  in  1868-69, 
and  Lieutenant  Schwatka,  and  W.  H.  Gilder  in  1878-79 
fought  their  way  northward  to  the  path  followed  by  the 
English  explorer,  found  many  relics  of  his  expedition, 


MERCHANT  MARINE  201 

and  from  the  Esquimaux  gathered  indisputable  evidence 
of  his  fate.  By  sea  the  United  States  was  represented  in 
the  search  for  Franklin,  by  the  ships  "Advance"  and 
"Rescue."  They  accomplished  little  of  importance;  but 
on  the  latter  vessel  was  a  young  navy  surgeon,  Dr.  Elisha 
Kent  Kane,  who  was  destined  to  make  notable  contribu- 
tions to  Arctic  knowledge,  both  as  explorer  and  writer. 

One  who  studies  the  enormous  volume  of  literature  in 
which  the  Arctic  story  is  told,  scarcely  can  fail  to  be  im- 
pressed by  the  pertinacity  with  which  men,  after  one  ex- 
perience in  the  polar  regions,  return  again  and  again  to 
the  quest  for  adventure  and  honors  in  the  ice-bound  zone. 
The  subaltern  on  the  expedition  of  to-day,  has  no  sooner 
returned  than  he  sets  about  organizing  a  new  expedition, 
of  which  he  may  be  commander.  The  commander  goes 
into  the  ice  time  and  again  until,  perhaps,  the  time  comes 
when  he  does  not  come  out.  The  leader  of  a  rescue  party 
becomes  the  leader  of  an  exploring  expedition,  which  in 
its  turn,  usually  comes  to  need  rescue. 

So  we  find  Dr.  Kane,  who  was  surgeon  of  an  expedi- 
tion for  the  rescue  of  Franklin,  commanding  four  years 
later  the  brig  "Advance,"  and  voyaging  northward 
through  Baffin's  Bay.  Narrowly,  indeed,  he  escaped  the 
fate  of  the  man  in  the  search  for  whom  he  had  gained  his 
first  Arctic  experience.  His  ship,  beset  by  ice,  and  sorely 
wounded,  remained  fixed  and  immovable  for  two  years. 
At  first  the  beleaguered  men  made  sledge  journeys  in 
every  direction  for  exploratory  purposes,  but  the  second 
year  they  sought  rather  by  determined,  though  futile 
dashes  across  the  rugged  surface  of  the  frozen  sea,  to 
find  some  place  of  refuge,  some  hope  of  emancipation 
from  the  thraldom  of  the  ice.  The  second  winter  all  of 
the  brig  except  the  hull,  which  served  for  shelter,  was 
burned  for  fuel ;  two  men  had  died,  and  many  were  sick 


202  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

of  scurvy,  the  sledge  dogs  were  all  dead,  and  the  end  of 
the  provisions  was  in  sight.  In  May,  1855,  a  retreat  in 
open  boats,  covering  eighty-five  days  and  over  fifty 
miles  of  open  sea,  brought  the  survivors  to  safety. 

When  men  have  looked  into  the  jaws  of  death,  it 
might  be  thought  they  would  strenuously  avoid  such  an- 
other view.  But  there  is  an  Arctic  fever  as  well  as  an 
Arctic  chill,  and,  once  in  the  blood,  it  drags  its  victim  ir- 
resistibly to  the  frozen  North,  until  perhaps  he  lays  his 
bones  among  the  icebergs,  cured  of  all  fevers  forever. 
And  so,  a  year  or  two  after  the  narrow  escape  of  Dr. 
Kane,  the  surgeon  of  his  expedition,  Dr.  Isaac  I.  Hayes, 
was  hard  at  work  fitting  out  an  expedition  of  which  he  was 
tobe  commander,  to  return  to  Baffin's  Bay  and  Smith  sound, 
and  if  possible,  fight  its  way  into  that  open  sea,  which 
Dr.  Hayes  long  contended  surrounded  the  North  Pole. 
No  man  in  the  Kane  expedition  had  encountered  greater 
perils,  or  withstood  more  cruel  suffering  than  Dr.  Hayes. 
A  boat  trip  which  he  made  in  search  of  succor,  has 
passed  into  Arctic  history  as  one  of  the  most  desperate 
expedients  ever  adopted  by  starving  men.  But  at  the 
first  opportunity  he  returned  again  to  the  scenes  of  his 
peril  and  his  pain.  His  expedition,  though  conducted 
with  spirit  and  determination,  was  not  of  great  scientific 
value,  as  he  was  greatly  handicapped  in  his  observations 
by  the  death  of  his  astronomer,  who  slipped  through  thin 
ice  into  the  sea,  and  froze  to  death  in  his  water-soaked 
garments. 

A  most  extraordinary  record  of  daring  and  suffering 
in  Arctic  exploration  was  made  by  Charles  F.  Hall,  to 
whom  I  have  already  referred.  Beginning  life  as  an 
engraver  in  Cincinnati,  he  became  engrossed  in  the  study 
of  Arctic  problems,  as  the  result  of  reading  the  stories  of 
the  early  navigators.  Every  book  bearing  on  the  subject 


MERCHANT  MARINE  203 

in  the  library  of  his  native  city,  was  eagerly  read,  and  his 
enthusiasm  infected  some  of  the  wealthy  citizens,  who 
gathered  for  his  use  a  very  considerable  collection  of 
volumes.  Mastering  all  the  literature  of  the  Arctic,  he 
determined  to  undertake  himself  the  arduous  work  of  the 
explorer.  Taking  passage  on  a  whaler,  he  spent  several 
years  among  the  Esquimaux,  living  in  their  crowded  and 
fetid  igloos,  devouring  the  blubber  and  uncooked  fish 
that  form  their  staple  articles  of  diet,  wearing  their  garb 
of  furs,  learning  to  navigate  the  treacherous  kayak  in 


"THE  TREACHEROUS  KAYAK" 


tossing  seas,  to  direct  the  yelping,  quarreling  team  of 
dogs  over  fields  of  ice  as  rugged  as  the  edge  of  some 
monstrous  saw,  studying  the  geography  so  far  as  known 
of  the  Arctic  regions,  perfecting  himself  in  all  the  arts 
by  which  man  has  contested  the  supremacy  of  that  land 
with  the  ice-king.  In  1870,  with  the  assistance  of  the 
American  Geographical  Society,  Hall  induced  the  United 
States  Government  to  fit  him  out  an  expedition  to  seek  the 
North  Pole — the  first  exploring  party  ever  sent  out  with 
that  definite  purpose.  The  steamer  "Polaris,"  a  converted 
navy  tug,  which  General  Greely  says  was  wholly  unfit  for 
Arctic  service,  was  given  him,  and  a  scientific  staff  sup- 
plied by  the  Government,  for  though  Hall  had  by  pains- 
taking endeavor  qualified  himself  to  lead  an  expedition, 
he  had  not  enjoyed  a  scientific  education.  Neither  was 
he  a  sailor  like  DeLong,  nor  a  man  trained  to  the  com- 
mand of  men  like  Greely.  Enthusiasm  and  natural  fitness 


204  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

with  him  took  the  place  of  systematic  training.  But  with 
him,  as  with  so  many  others  in  this  world,  the  attainment 
of  the  threshold  of  his  ambition  proved  to  be  but  opening 
the  door  to  death.  By  a  sledge  journey  from  his  ship 
he  reached  Cape  Brevoort,  above  latitude  82,  at  that  time 
the  farthest  north  yet  attained,  but  the  exertion  proved 
too  much  for  him,  and  he  had  scarcely  regained  his  ship 
when  he  died.  His  name  will  live,  however,  in  the  annals 
of  the  Arctic,  for  his  contributions  to  geographical 
knowledge  were  many  and  precious. 

The  men  who  survived  him  determined  to  continue 
his  work,  and  the  next  summer  two  fought  their  way 
northward  a  few  miles  beyond  the  point  attained  by  Hall. 
But  after  this  achievement  the  ship  was  caught  in  the  ice- 
pack, and  for  two  months  drifted  about,  helpless  in  that 
unrelenting  grasp.  Out  of  this  imprisonment  the  ex- 
plorers escaped  through  a  disaster,  which  for  a  time  put 
all  their  lives  in  the  gravest  jeopardy,  and  the  details  of 
which  seem  almost  incredible.  In  October,  when  the  long 
twilight  which  precedes  the  polar  night,  had  already  set 
in,  there  came  a  fierce  gale,  accompanied  by  a  tossing, 
roaring  sea.  The  pack,  racked  by  the  surges,  which  now 
raised  it  with  a  mighty  force,  and  then  rolling  on,  left  it 
to  fall  unsupported,  began  to  go  to  pieces.  The  whistling 
wind  accelerated  its  destruction,  driving  the  floes  far 
apart,  heaping  them  up  against  the  hull  of  the  ship  until 
the  grinding  and  the  prodigious  pressure  opened  her 
seams  and  the  water  rushed  in.  The  cry  that  the  ship 
was  sinking  rung  along  the  decks,  and  all  hands  turned 
with  desperate  energy  to  throwing  out  on  the  ice-floe  to 
windward,  sledges,  provisions,  arms,  records — everything 
that  could  be  saved  against  the  sinking  of  the  ship,  which 
all  thought  was  at  hand.  Nineteen  of  the  ship's  company 
were  landed  on  the  floe  to  carry  the  material  away  from 


\ 


I 


MERCHANT  MARINE  205 

its  edge  to  a  place  of  comparative  safety.  The  peril 
seemed  so  imminent  that  the  men  in  their  panic  per- 
formed prodigious  feats  of  strength — lifting  and  handling 
alone  huge  boxes,  which  at  ordinary  times,  would  stagger 
two  men.  A  driving,  whirling  snowstorm  added  to  the 
gloom,  confusion,  and  terror  of  the  scene,  shutting  out 
almost  completely  those  on  the  ice  from  the  view  of  those 
still  on  the  ship.  In  the  midst  of  the  work  the  cry  was 
raised  that  the  floes  were  parting,  ajid  with  incredible 
rapidity  the  ice  broke  away  from  the  ship  on  every  side, 
so  that  communication  between  those  on  deck  and  those 
on  the  floe  was  instantly  cut  off  by  a  broad  interval  of 
black  and  tossing  water,  while  the  dark  and  snow-laden 
air  cut  off  vision  on  every  side.  The  cries  of  those  on 
the  ice  mingled  with  those  from  the  fast  vanishing  ship, 
for  each  party  thought  itself  in  the  more  desperate  case. 
The  ice  was  fast  going  to  pieces,  and  boats  were  plying 
in  the  lanes  of  water  thus  opened,  picking  up  those  cling- 
ing to  smaller  cakes  of  ice  and  transporting  them  to  the 
main  floe.  On  the  ship  the  captain's  call  had  summoned 
all  hands  to  muster,  and  they  gazed  on  each  other  in 
dumb  despair  as  they  saw  how  few  of  the  ship's  company 
remained.  All  were  sent  to  the  pumps,  for  the  water  in 
the  hold  was  rising  with  ominous  rapidity.  The  cry  rang 
out  that  the  steam-pumps  must  be  started  if  the  ship  was 
to  be  saved,  but  long  months  had  passed  since  any  fire  had 
blazed  under  those  boilers,  and  to  get  up  steam  was  a 
work  of  hours.  With  tar-soaked  oakum  and  with  drip- 
ping whale  blubber  the  engineer  strove  to  get  the  fires 
roaring,  the  while  the  men  on  deck  toiled  with  desperate 
energy  at  the  hand-pumps.  But  the  water  gained  on 
them.  The  ship  sunk  lower  and  lower  in  the  black  ocean, 
until  a  glance  over  the  side  could  tell  all  too  plainly  that 
she  was  going  to  her  fate.  Now  the  water  begins  to 


206 


THE   STORY    OF    OUR 


ooze  through  the  cracks  in  the  engine-room  floor,  and 
break  in  gentle  ripples  about  the  feet  of  the  firemen.  If 
it  rises  much  higher  it  will  flood  the  fire-boxes,  and  then 
all  will  be  over,  for  there  is  not  one  boat  left  on  the  ship — 
all  were  landed  on  the  now  invisible  floe.  But  just  as  all 
hope  was  lost  there  came  a  faint  hissing  of  steam,  the 
pumps  began  slowly  moving,  and  then  settled  down  into 
their  monotonous  "chug-chug,"  the  sweetest  sound,  that 
day,  those  desperate  mariners  had  ever  heard.  They 
were  saved  bv  the  narrowest  of  chances. 


ADRIFT  ON  AN  ICE-FLOE 


We  must  pass  hastily  to  the  sequel  of  this  seemingly 
irreparable  disaster.  The  "Polaris"  was  beached,  winter 
quarters  established,  and  those  who  had  clung  to  the  ship 
spent  the  winter  building  boats,  in  which,  the  following 
spring,  they  made  their  way  southward  until  picked  up 
by  a  whaler.  Those  on  the  floe  drifted  at  the  mercy  of 
the  wind  and  tide  195  days,  making  over  1300  miles  to 
the  southward.  As  the  more  temperate  latitudes  were 
reached,  and  the  warmer  days  of  spring  came  on,  the  floe 
began  going  to  pieces,  and  they  were  continually  con- 


MERCHANT  MARINE  207 

fronted  with  the  probability  of  being  forced  to  their 
boat  for  safety — one  boat,  built  to  hold  eight,  and  now  the 
sole  reliance  of  nineteen  people.  It  is  hard  to  picture 
through  the  imagination  the  awful  strain  that  day  and 
night  rested  upon  the  minds  of  these  hapless  castaways. 
Never  could  they  drop  off  to  sleep  except  in  dread  that 
during  the  night  the  ice  on  which  they  slept,  might  split, 
even  under  their  very  pallets,  and  they  be  awakened  by 
the  deathly  plunge  into  the  icy  water. >•  Day  and  night  they 
were  startled  and  affrighted  by  the  thunderous  rumblings 
and  cracking  of  the  breaking  floe — a  sound  that  an  ex- 
perienced Arctic  explorer  says  is  the  most  terrifying  ever 
heard  by  man,  having  in  it  something  of  the  hoarse  rum- 
ble of  heavy  artillery,  the  sharp  and  murderous  crackle  of 
machine  guns,  and  a  kind  of  titanic  grinding,  for  which 
there  is  no  counterpart  in  the  world  of  tumult.  Living 
thus  in  constant  dread  of  death,  the  little  company  drifted 
on,  seemingly  miraculously  preserved.  Their  floe  was  at 
last  reduced  from  a  great  sheet  of  ice,  perhaps  a  mile  or 
more  square,  to  a  scant  ten  yards  by  seventy-five,  and  this 
rapidly  breaking  up.  In  two  days  four  whalers  passed 
near  enough  for  them  to  see,  yet  failed  to  see  them,  but 
finally  their  frantic  signals  attracted  attention,  and  they 
were  picked  up — not  only  the  original  nineteen  who  had 
begun  the  drift  six  months  earlier,  but  one  new  and  help- 
less passenger,  for  one  of  the  Esquimau  women  had 
given  birth  to  a  child  while  on  the  ice. 

The  next  notable  Arctic  expedition  from  the  United 
States  had  its  beginning  in  journalistic  enterprise.  Mr. 
James  Gordon  Bennett,  owner  of  the  New  York  Herald, 
who  had  already  manifested  his  interest  in  geographical 
work  by  sending  Henry  M.  Stanley  to  find  Livingston  in 
the  heart  of  the  Dark  Continent,  fitted  out  the  steam  yacht 
"Pandora,"  which  had  already  been  used  in  Arctic  ser- 


208  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

vice,  and  placed  her  at  the  disposal  of  Lieutenant  De- 
Long,  U.  S.  N.,  for  an  Arctic  voyage.  The  name  of  the 
ship  was  changed  to  "Jeannette,"  and  control  of  the  expe- 
dition was  vested  in  the  United  States  Government, 
though  Mr.  Bennett's  generosity  defrayed  all  charges. 
The  vessel  was  manned  from  the  navy,  and  Engineer  Mel- 
ville, destined  to  bear  a  name  great  among  Arctic  men, 
together  with  two  navy  lieutenants,  were  assigned  to  her. 
The  voyage  planned  was  then  unique  among  American 
Arctic  expeditions,  for  instead  of  following  the  conven- 
tional route  north  through  Baffin's  Bay  and  Smith  Sound, 
the  "Jeannette"  sailed  from  San  Francisco  and  pushed 
northward  through  Bering  Sea.  In  July,  1879,  she 
weighed  anchor.  Two  years  after,  no  word  having  been 
heard  of  her  meanwhile,  the  inevitable  relief  expedition 
was  sent  out — the  steamer  "Rodgers,"  which  after 
making  a  gallant  dash  to  a  most  northerly  point,  was 
caught  in  the  ice-pack  and  there  burned  to  the  water's 
edge,  her  crew,  with  greatest  difficulty,  escaping,  and 
reaching  home  without  one  ray  of  intelligence  of  De- 
Long's  fate. 

That  fate  was  bitter  indeed,  a  trial  by  cold,  starvation, 
and  death,  fit  to  stand  for  awesomeness  beside  Greely's 
later  sorrowful  story.  From  the  very  outset  evil  fortune 
had  attended  the  "Jeannette."  Planning  to  winter  on 
Wrangle  Land — then  thought  to  be  a  continent — DeLong 
caught  in  the  ice-pack,  was  carried  past  its  northern  end, 
thus  proving  it  to  be  an  island,  indeed,  but  making  the 
discovery  at  heavy  cost.  Winter  in  the  pack  was  attended 
with  severe  hardships  and  grave  perils.  Under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  ocean  currents  and  the  tides,  the  ice  was 
continually  breaking  up  and  shifting,  and  each  time  the 
ship  was  in  imminent  danger  of  being  crushed.  In  his 
journal  DeLong  tries  to  describe  the  terrifying  clamor  of 


MERCHANT   MARINE  209 

a  shifting  pack.  "I  know  of  no  sound  on  shore  that  can 
be  compared  with  it,"  he  writes.  "A  rumble,  a  shriek,  a 
groan,  and  the  crash  of  a  falling  house  all  combined, 
might  serve  to  convey  an  idea  of  the  noise  with  which  this 
motion  of  the  ice-floe  is  accompanied.  Great  masses  from 
fifteen  to  twenty-five  feet  in  height,  when  up-ended,  are 
sliding  along  at  various  angles  of  elevation  and  jam, 
and  between  and  among  them  are  large  and  confused 
masses  of  debris,  like  a  marble  yard  adrift.  Occasionally 
a  stoppage  occurs ;  some  piece  has  caught  against  or  un- 
der our  floe ;  there  follows  a  groaning  and  crackling,  our 
floe  bends  and  humps  up  in  places  like  domes.  Crash! 
The  dome  splits,  another  yard  of  floe  edge  breaks  off,  the 
pressure  is  relieved,  and  on  goes  again  the  flowing  mass 
of  rumbles,  shrieks,  groans,  etc.,  for  another  spell." 

Time  and  again  this  nerve-racking  experience  was  en- 
countered. More  than  once  serious  leaks  were  started 
in  the  ship,  which  had  to  be  met  by  working  the  pumps 
and  building  false  bulwarks  in  the  hold ;  but  by  the  exer- 
cise of  every  art  known  to  sailors,  she  was  kept  afloat 
and  tenable  until  June  n,  1881,  when  a  fierce  and  unex- 
pected nip  broke  her  fairly  in  two,  and  she  speedily  sunk. 
There  followed  weeks  and  months  of  incessant  and  des- 
perate struggling  with  sledge  and  boat  against  the  forces 
of  polar  nature.  The  ship  had  sunk  about  150  miles 
from  what  are  known  as  the  New  Siberian  Islands,  for 
which  DeLong  then  laid  his  course.  The  ice  was  rugged, 
covered  with  soft  snow,  which  masked  treacherous  pit- 
falls, and  full  of  chasms  which  had  to  be  bridged.  Five 
sleds  and  three  boats  were  dragged  by  almost  super- 
human exertions,  the  sick  feebly  aiding  the  sturdy  in  the 
work.  Imagine  the  disappointment,  and  despair  of  the 
leader,  when,  after  a  full  weelc  of  this  cruel  labor,  with  pro- 
visions ever  growing  more  scanty,  an  observation  showed 


210 


THE   STORY   OF    OUR 


him  they  were  actually  twenty-eight  miles  further  away 
from  their  destination  than  when  they  started!  While 
they  were  toiling  south,  the  ice-floe  over  which  they  were 
plodding  was  drifting  more  rapidly  north.  Nil  desperan- 
dum  must  ever  be  the  watchword  of  Arctic  expeditions, 


DE  LONG'S   MEN   DRAGGING  THEIB  BOATS   OVER  THE  ICE 

and  DeLong,  saying  nothing  to  the  others  of  his  dis- 
covery, changed  slightly  the  course  of  his  march  and 
labored  on.  July  19  they  reached  an  island  hitherto  un- 
known, which  was  thereupon  named  Bennett  Island.  A 
curious  feature  of  the  toilsome  march  across  the  ice,  was 


MERCHANT   MARINE  211 

that,  though  the  temperature  seldom  rose  to  the  freezing 
point,  the  men  complained  bitterly  of  the  heat  and  suf- 
fered severely  from  sun-burn. 

At  Bennett  Island  they  took  to  the  boats,  for  now  open 
water  was  everywhere  visible.  DeLong  was  making  for 
the  Lena  River  in  Siberia,  where  there  were  known  to  be 
several  settlements,  but  few  of  his  party  were  destined  to 
reach  it.  In  a  furious  storm,  on  the  I2th  of  September, 
the  three  boats  were  separated.  One^  commanded  by 
Lieutenant  Chipp,  with  eight  men,  must  have  foundered, 
for  it  was  never  again  heard  of.  A  second,  commanded 
by  George  W.  Melville,  afterward  chief  engineer  of  the 
United  States  Navy,  found  one  of  the  mouths  of  the 
Lena  River,  and  ascending  it  reached  a  small  Siberian 
village.  Happy  would  it  have  been  had  DeLong  and  his 
men  discovered  the  same  pathway  to  safety,  but  the  Lena 
is  like  our  own  Mississippi,  a  river  with  a  broad  delta  and 
a  multiplicity  of  mouths.  Into  an  estuary,  the  banks  of 
which  were  untrodden  by  man,  and  which  itself  was  too 
shallow  for  navigation  for  any  great  distance,  remorseless 
fate  led  DeLong.  Forced  soon  to  take  to  their  sleds 
again,  his  companions  toiled  painfully  along  the  river 
bank,  with  no  known  destination,  but  bearing  ever  to  the 
south — the  only  way  in  which  hope  could  possibly  lie. 
Deserted  huts  and  other  signs  of  former  human  habita- 
tion were  plenty,  but  nothing  living  crossed  their  path. 
At  last,  the  food  being  at  the  point  of  exhaustion,  and  the 
men  too  weary  and  weak  for  rapid  travel,  DeLong  chose 
two  of  the  sturdiest,  Nindemann  and  Noros,  and  sent 
them  ahead  in  the  hope  that  they  might  find  and  return 
with  succor.  The  rest  stumbled  on  behind,  well  pleased  if 
they  could  advance  three  miles  daily.  Food  gave  out, 
then  strength.  Resignation  took  the  place  of  determina- 
tion. DeLong's  journal  for  the  last  week  of  life  is  in- 
expressibly pitiful : 


212  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

"Sunday,  October  23 — I33d  Day:  Everybody  prett) 
weak.  Slept  or  rested  all  day,  and  then  managed  to  gel 
in  enough  wood  before  dark.  Read  part  of  divine  service 
Suffering  in  our  feet.  No  foot-gear. 

"Monday,  October  24 — I34th  Day:    A  hard  night. 

"Tuesday,  October  25 — I35th  Day. 

"Wednesday,  October  26 — I36th  day. 

"Thursday,  October  27 — I37th  Day :  Iverson  broker 
down. 

"Friday,  October  28 — I38th  Day:  Iverson  died  dur- 
ing early  morning. 

"Saturday,  October  29th — I39th  Day:  Dressier  diec 
during  the  night. 

"Sunday,  October  30 — i4Oth  Day:  Boyd  and  Corti 
died  during  the  night.  Mr.  Collins  dying." 

This  is  the  last  entry.  The  hand  that  penned  it,  as  th< 
manuscript  shows,  was  as  firm  and  steady  as  though  th( 
writer  were  sitting  in  his  library  at  home.  Words  an 
spelled  out  in  full,  punctuation  carefully  observed.  Ho^ 
long  after  these  words  were  set  down  DeLong  too  died 
none  may  ever  know;  but  when  Melville,  whom  Ninde- 
mann  and  Noros  had  found  after  sore  privations,  reachec 
the  spot  of  the  death  camp,  he  came  upon  a  sorrowfu 
scene.  "I  came  upon  the  bodies  of  three  men  parti) 
buried  in  the  snow,"  he  writes,  "one  hand  reaching  out 
with  the  left  arm  of  the  man  reaching  way  above  the  sur- 
face of  the  snow — his  whole  left  arm.  I  immediatel) 
recognized  them  as  Captain  DeLong,  Dr.  Ambler,  and  A? 
Sam,  the  cook.  ...  I  found  the  journal  aboul 
three  or  four  feet  in  the  rear  of  DeLong — that  is,  it  lookec 
as  though  he  had  been  lying  down,  and  with  his  left  hanc 
tossed  the  book  over  his  shoulder  to  the  rear,  or  to  the 
eastward  of  him." 

How  these  few  words  bring  the  whole  scene  up  befon 


MERCHANT  MARINE  213 

us !  Last,  perhaps,  of  all  to  die,  lying  by  the  smoldering 
fire,  the  ashes  of  which  were  in  the  middle  of  the  group 
of  bodies  when  found,  DeLong  puts  down  the  final  words 
which  tell  of  the  obliteration  of  his  party,  tosses  the  book 
wearily  over  his  shoulder,  and  turns  on  his  side  to  die. 
And  then  the  snow,  falling  gently,  pitifully  covers  the 
rigid  forms  and  holds  them  in  its  pure  embrace  until  loyal 
friends  seek  them  out,  and  tell  to  the  world  that  again 
brave  lives  have  been  sacrificed  to  the  ogre  of  the  Arctic. 

One  of  the  most  disastrous  of  the  expeditions  fitted 
out  in  the  United  States  for  the  discovery  of  the  North 
Pole  was  that  commanded  by  Lieutenant  A.  W.  Greely 
of  the  United  States  Army.  Its  story  is  a  record  of 
hardship,  starvation  and  death.  Of  the  band  of  twenty- 
five  who  set  forth  on  the  quest  for  the  Pole  seven  were 
rescued  after  three  years  of  Arctic  suffering,  helpless, 
starving  and  within  a  day  of  death.  They  had  seen  their 
comrades  die,  destroyed  by  starvation  and  cold,  passing 
away  in  delirium  while  babbling  of  green  fields  and 
plenteous  tables.  From  the  doorway  of  the  almost  col- 
lapsed tent  in  which  the  seven  survivors  were  found 
could  be  seen  the  row  of  shallow  graves  in  which  their 
less  fortunate  fellows  lay  buried — all  save  two  whom 
they  had  been  too  weak  to  lay  away. 

The  Greely  expedition  was  not  precisely  part  of  the 
record  of  our  merchant  marine.  It  was  not  even  a  naval 
expedition  for  it  was  commanded  by  an  army  officer,  and 
was  under  the  direction  of  the  Secretary  of  War — at 
that  time  Robert  Lincoln,  son  of  our  great  war  President. 
Two  army  lieutenants  and  twenty  men  of  the  regular 
army  and  the  signal  corps,  together  with  Edward  Israel, 
astronomer,  and  George  W.  Rice,  photographer,  who 
volunteered  and  were  enlisted,  made  up  the  party.  But 
American  sailors  carried  the  explorers  to  their  landing 


214  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

place  in  the  whaler  "Proteus,"  and  American  sailors, 
commanded  by  Winfield  Scott  Schley,  afterwards  the 
hero  of  the  naval  victory  of  Santiago,  rescued  them  from 
their  starvation  camp,  so  that  some  brief  account  of  the 
expedition  will  not  be  out  of  place  in  a  story  of  the 
United  States  at  sea. 

The  Greely  expedition  was  not  designed  for  the  dis- 
covery of  the  North  Pole.  It  was  the  contribution  of 
the  United  States  to  an  international  plan  for  the  simul- 
taneous establishment  and  maintenance  of  a  series  of 
observation  stations  within  the  Arctic  circle.  These 
observations  were  to  deal  with  weather,  currents  of  air 
and  sea,  the  deviation  and  extent  of  magnetic  and  elec- 
trical disturbances — in  brief  data  similar  to  those  collated 
by  the  signal  service  at  home.  And  as  the  Signal  Service 
was  a  branch  of  the  army  establishment  the  expedition 
•was  turned  over  to  the  army. 

The  task  did  not  appear  to  be  a  difficult  one.  Two 
years  in  the  Arctic  was  the  time  of  its  duration.  Greely 
was  to  go  by  ship  to  some  point  on  Lady  Franklin  Bay, 
there  land  and  build  his  station.  He  was  to  be  furnished 
at  the  outset  with  stores  for  three  years,  but  at  the  end 
of  one  year  a  relief  ship  was  to  be  sent.  Should  it  fail 
to  reach  the  party  it  was  to  cache  supplies  and  de- 
spatches at  specified  points  at  which  they  could  be 
reached  by  Greely.  A  year  later  a  second  relief  ship 
would  be  sent  to  bring  the  party  home.  Should  this 
vessel  fail  to  reach  Greely  by  a  specified  date  he  was 
to  break  camp  and  travel  southward  along  the  main  land 
until  he  either  met  the  ship  or  found  fresh  supplies  which 
she  was  to  cache. 

No  plan  could  have  been  better  devised.  None  ever 
failed  more  utterly.  The  outcome  gave  force  to  the 
opinion  once  expressed  by  Lieutenant  Schwatka,  veteran 


MERCHANT  MARINE  215 

Arctic  explorer,  that  the  teachings  of  experience  were 
often  worse  than  useless  in  polar  work.  Greely  made 
his  camp  as  planned,  took  his  observations,  pushed  for- 
ward some  exploratory  expeditions  by  sledge  until  he 
had  reached  what  was  then  the  "furthest  north" — lati- 
tude 83°,  24'  north — and  carried  his  party  through  the 
first  year  without  sickness  or  material  discomfort.  He 
built  for  his  party  a  comfortable  station  on  the  shores 
of  Discovery  Bay,  which  he  named  Fort  Conger,  after  a 
United  States  Senator  who  later  was  Minister  to  China 
at  the  time  of  the  Boxer  rebellion.  Here  two  winters 
and  a  summer  were  spent.  During  the  second  winter  the 
men  suffered  somewhat  from  depression  because  of  the 
failure  of  the  first  relief  ship  to  reach  them.  She  had 
in  fact  visited  the  region,  made  a  most  perfunctory 
search  for  Greely  and  retired  after  leaving  provisions  at 
points  which  the  explorers  never  reached. 

When  the  second  spring  arrived  Greely  began  his 
preparations  to  move  to  the  south.  Had  he  started  as 
soon  as  the  Arctic  sun  began  its  brief  appearances  all 
would  have  been  well.  But  he  relied  on  the  specific 
promises  of  the  War  Department,  and  clung  to  his  camp, 
continuing  his  observations  and — fatal  error — depleting 
his  provisions.  It  was  the  middle  of  August  before  he 
packed  his  remaining  supplies  on  sledges  and  started 
south  hoping  to  meet  the  relief  expedition  on  the  way. 

At  that  moment  the  "Proteus"  of  the  relief  expedi- 
tion was  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea — nipped  by  the  ice  pack. 
Her  consort,  the  "Yantic"  had  gone  impotently  home, 
not  even  leaving  any  provisions  for  the  abandoned  men. 

Fighting  their  way  over  ice  fields,  of  "hummocky" 
ice  and  across  turbulent  waters  the  retreating  party  made 
500  miles  in  a  little  over  fifty  days — 400  miles  in  the 
boats  and  100  by  sledges. 


216  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

Sledging  in  the  Arctic  over  "hummock"  ice  is,  per- 
haps, the  most  wearing  form  of  toil  known  to  man,  and 
with  such  heavy  loads  as  Greely  carried,  every  mile  had 
to  be  gone  over  twice,  and  sometimes  three  times,  as 
the  men  would  be  compelled  to  leave  part  of  the  load 
behind  and  go  back  after  it.  Yet  the  party  was  cheerful, 
singing  and  joking  at  their  work,  as  one  of  the  sergeants 
records.  Finally  they  reached  the  vicinity  of  Cape 
Sabine,  all  in  good  health,  with  instruments  and  records 
saved,  and  with  arms  and  ammunition  enough  to  procure 
ample  food  in  a  land  well  stocked  with  game.  But  they 
did  not  worry  very  much  about  food,  though  their  sup- 
ply was  by  this  time  growing  low.  Was  not  Cape  Sabine 
the  spot  at  which  the  relief  expeditions  were  to  cacne 
food,  and  could  it  be  possible  that  the  great  United  States 
Government  would  fail  twice  in  an  enterprise  which  any 
Yankee  whaler  would  gladly  take  a  contract  to  fulfill? 

The  men  were  now,  however,  keenly  alive  to  the  peril 
of  their  situation.  Lieutenant  Lockwood  wrote  in  his 
diary  under  date  of  October  5th : 

"We  have  now  three  chances  for  our  lives:  First, 
rinding  American  cache  sufficient  at  Sabine  or  Isabella; 
second,  of  crossing  the  straits  when  our  present  ration 
is  gone ;  third,  of  shooting  sufficient  seal  and  walrus  near 
by  here  to  last  the  winter." 

The  second  chance  proved  impracticable.  The  third 
was  insufficient,  though  the  game  shot  did  preserve 
the  lives  of  a  few  of  the  party.  While  the  main  com- 
pany was  building  the  winter  camp,  Photographer  Rice 
with  one  of  the  Esquimaux  set  out  for  Cape  Sabine  to 
put  the  first  chance  for  life  to  the  test.  He  brought  back 
a  report  which  held  out  a  promise  that  in  the  end  proved 
not  merely  illusory  but  fatal. 

For  in  a  cairn  of  stones  at  Cape  Sabine  the  searchers 


MERCHANT  MARINE  217 

found  a  record  left  by  Garlington,  the  commander  of  the 
"Proteus"  saying  that  he  had  cached  near  by  500  rations 
of  bread,  tea  and  canned  goods,  and  that  in  an  old  cache 
left  by  an  earlier  English  expedition  he  had  found  250 
rations  more  in  good  condition.  This  indicated  that  some 
1,300  pounds  of  food  was  in  the  vicinity — too  much  to 
haul  to  Greely's  winter  camp,  but  enough  to  justify  his 
abandoning  that  camp  and  moving  to  Cape  Sabine.  There 
was  still  a  chance  for  him  to  escape  altogether  by  taking 
to  his  boats,  and  moving  southward  through  the  open 
water,  but  the  news  of  provisions  enough  to  last  through 
the  winter  led  him  to  reject  this  course.  He  determined 
upon  Cape  Sabine  and,  as  the  issue  showed,  starvation. 

The  permanent  camp  which  for  many  of  the  party 
was  to  be  a  tomb,  was  fixed  a  few  miles  from  Cape  Sabine 
by  the  side  of  a  pool  of  fresh  water — frozen,  of  course. 
Here  a  hut  was  built  with  stone  walls  three  feet  high, 
rafters  made  of  oars  with  the  blades  cut  off,  and  a  can- 
vas roof,  except  in  the  center,  where  an  upturned  whale- 
boat  made  a  sort  of  a  dome.  Only  under  the  whaleboat 
could  a  man  get  on  his  knees  and  hold  himself  erect; 
elsewhere  the  heads  of  the  tall  men  touched  the  roof 
when  they  sat  up  in  their  sleeping  bags  on  the  dirt  floor. 
With  twenty-five  men  in  sleeping  bags,  which  they  seldom 
left,  two  in  each  bag,  packed  around  the  sides  of  the  hut, 
a  stove  fed  with  stearine  burning  in  the  center  for  the 
cooking  of  the  insufficient  food  to  which  they  were  re- 
duced, and  all  air  from  without  excluded,  the  hut  became 
a  place  as  much  of  torture  as  of  refuge. 

The  problem  of  food  and  the  grim  certainty  of  star- 
vation were  forced  upon  them  with  the  very  first  exami- 
nation of  the  caches  of  which  Garlington  had  left  such 
encouraging  reports.  At  Cape  Isabella  only  144  pounds 
of  meat  was  found,  in  Garlington's  cache  only  100  rations 


2i8  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

instead  of  500  as  he  had  promised.  Moldy  bread  and  dog 
biscuits  fairly  green  with  mold,  though  condemned  by 
Greely,  were  seized  by  the  famished  men,  and  devoured 
ravenously  without  a  thought  of  their  unwholesomeness. 
When  November  I  came,  the  daily  ration  for  each  man 
was  fixed  at  six  ounces  of  bread,  four  ounces  of  meat, 
and  four  ounces  of  vegetables — about  a  quarter  of  what 
would  be  moderate  sustenance  for  a  healthy  man.  By 
keeping  the  daily  issue  of  food  down  to  this  pitiful 
amount  Greely  calculated  that  he  would  have  enough  to 
sustain  life  until  the  first  of  March,  when  with  ten  days' 
double  rations  still  remaining,  he  would  make  an  effort 
to  cross  the  strait  to  Littleton  Island,  where  he  thought 
— mistakenly — that  Lieutenant  Garlington  awaited  him 
•with  ample  stores.  Of  course  all  game  shot  added  to  the 
size  of  the  rations,  and  that  the  necessary  work  of  hunt- 
ing might  be  prosecuted,  the  hunters  were  from  the  first 
given  extra  rations  to  maintain  their  strength.  Fuel,  too, 
offered  a  serious  problem.  Alcohol,  stearine  and  broken 
wood  from  a  whaleboat  and  barrels,  were  all  employed. 
In  order  to  get  the  greatest  heat  from  the  wood  it  was 
broken  up  into  pieces  not  much  larger  than  matches. 

The  story  of  Christmas  Day  is  inexpressibly  touching 
as  told  in  the  simple  language  of  Greely's  diary : 

"Our  breakfast  was  a  thin  pea-soup,  with  seal  blub- 
ber, and  a  small  quantity  of  preserved  potatoes.  Later 
two  cans  of  cloudberries  were  served  to  each  mess,  and 
at  half -past  one  o'clock  Long  and  Frederick  commenced 
cooking  dinner,  which  consisted  of  a  seal  stew,  containing 
seal  blubber,  preserved  potatoes  and  bread,  flavored  with 
pickled  onions;  then  came  a  kind  of  rice  pudding,  with 
raisins,  seal  blubber  and  condensed  milk.  Afterward  we 
had  chocolate,  followed  later  by  a  kind  of  punch  made  of 
a  gill  of  rum  and  a  quarter  of  a  lemon  to  each  man.  .  .  . 


MERCHANT  MARINE  219 

Everybody  was  required  to  sing  a  song  or  tell  a  story, 
and  pleasant  conversation  with  the  expression  of  kindly 
feelings  was  kept  up  until  midnight." 

They  were,  however,  nearing  the  end  of  all  that  could 
sustain  life.  In  a  few  days  men  began  to  die  from  priva- 
tions. For  food  they  were  reduced  to  bits  of  leather, 
shrimps,  lichens  from  the  rocks.  One  man  was  shot  for 
stealing  from  the  general  store.  By  April  there  was 
little  left  to  do  save  to  die,  and  they  Went  fast.  Hardly 
one  but  left  a  record  of  heroism  in  the  face  of  certain 
death. 

Meantime  a  relief  expedition,  organized  at  home  after 
inexcusable  delay,  was  searching  for  the  castaways. 
Into  the  details  of  its  search  we  cannot  enter  but  this 
description  of  the  final  rescue  given  by  Admiral  Schley, 
in  command,  will  sufficiently  round  out  the  melancholy 
story  of  Greely's  ill-fated  expedition: 

It  was  half-past  eight  in  the  evening  as  the  cutter  steamed 
around  the  rocky  bluff  of  Cape  Sabine  and  made  her  way 
to  the  cove,  four  miles  further  on,  which  Colwell  knew  so 
well.  .  .  .  The  storm  which  had  been  raging  with  only  slight 
intervals  since  early  the  day  before,  still  kept  up,  and  the 
wind  was  driving  in  bitter  gusts  through  the  opening  in  the 
ridge  that  followed  the  coast  to  the  westward.  Although  the 
sky  was  overcast  it  was  broad  daylight — the  daylight  of  a  dull 
winter  afternoon.  ...  At  last  the  boat  arrived  at  the  site 
of  the  wreck  cache,  and  the  shore  was  eagerly  scanned,  but 
nothing  could  be  seen.  Rounding  the  next  point,  the  cutter 
opened  out  the  cove  beyond.  There  on  the  top  of  a  little  ridge, 
fifty  or  sixty  yards  above  the  ice-foot,  was  plainly  outlined 
the  figure  of  a  man.  Instantly  the  coxswain  caught  up  his 
boathook  and  waved  his  flag.  The  man  on  the  ridge  had  seen 
them,  for  he  stooped,  picked  up  a  signal  flag,  and  waved  it  in 
reply.  Then  he  was  seen  coming  slowly  and  cautiously  down 
the  steep  rocky  slope.  Twice  he  fell  down  before  he  reached 
the  foot.  As  he  approached,  still  walking  slowly  and  with  diffi- 
culty, Colwell  hailed  him  from  the  bow  of  the  boat. 


220  THE  STORY   OF  OUR 

"Who  all  are  there  left?" 

"Seven  left." 

As  the  cutter  struck  the  ice  Col  well  jumped  off,  and  went 
up  to  him.  He  was  a  ghastly  sight.  His  cheeks  were  hollow, 
his  eyes  wild,  his  hair  and  beard  long  and  matted.  His  army 
blouse,  covering  several  thicknesses  of  shirts  and  jackets,  was 
ragged  and  dirty.  He  wore  a  little  fur  cap  and  rough  mocca- 
sins of  untanned  leather  tied  around  the  leg.  As  he  spoke  his 
utterance  was  thick  and  mumbling,  and  in  his  agitation  his  jaws 
worked  in  convulsive  twitches.  As  the  two  met,  the  man,  with 
a  sudden  impulse,  took  off  his  gloves  and  shook  Colwell's 
hand. 

"Where  are  they?"  asked  Colwell,  briefly. 

"In  the  tent,"  said  the  man,  pointing  over  his  shoulder, 
"over  the  hill— the  tent's  down." 

"Is  Mr.  Greely  alive?" 

"Yes,  Greely's  alive." 

"Any  other  officers?" 

"No."    Then  he  repeated  absently,  "The  tent's  down." 

"Who  are  you?" 

"Long." 

Before  this  colloquy  was  over  Lowe  and  Norman  had  started 
up  the  hill.  Hastily  filling  his  pockets  with  bread,  and  taking 
the  two  cans  of  pemmican,  Colwell  told  the  coxswain  to  take 
Long  into  the  cutter,  and  started  after  the  others  with  Ash. 
Reaching  the  crest  of  the  ridge  and  looking  southward,  they 
saw  spread  out  before  them  a  desolate  expanse  of  rocky  ground, 
sloping  gradually  from  a  ridge  on  the  east  to  the  ice-bound 
shore,  which  on  the  west  made  in  and  formed  a  cove.  Back  of 
the  level  space  was  a  range  of  hills  rising  up  eight  hundred  feet 
with  a  precipitous  face,  broken  in  two  by  a  gorge,  through  which 
the  wind  was  blowing  furiously.  On  a  little  elevation  directly 
in  front  was  the  tent.  Hurrying  on  across  the  intervening 
hollow,  Colwell  came  up  with  Lowe  and  Norman  just  as  they 
were  greeting  a  soldierly  looking  man  who  had  come  out  of 
the  tent. 

As  Colwell  approached,  Norman  was  saying  to  the  man: 
"There  is  the  Lieutenant." 

And  he  added  to  Lieutenant  Colwell: 

"This  is  Sergeant  Brainard." 

Brainard  immediately  drew  himself  up  to  the  position  of  the 


MERCHANT  MARINE  221 

soldier,  and  was  about  to  salute,  when  Colwell  took  his  hand. 

At  this  moment  there  was  a  confused  murmur  within  the 
tent,  and  a  voice  said:  "Who's  there?" 

Norman  answered:  "It's  Norman — Norman  who  was  in  the 
Troteus/  " 

This  was  followed  by  cries  of  "Oh,  it's  Norman,"  and  a 
sound  like  a  feeble  cheer. 

Meanwhile  one  of  the  relief  party,  who  in  his  agitation  and 
excitement  was  crying  like  a  child,  was  down  on  his  knees 
trying  to  roll  away  the  stones  that  hel$  the  flapping  tent- 
cloth.  .  .  .  Colwell  called  for  a  knife,  cut  a  slit  in  the  tent 
cover  and  looked  in.  It  was  a  sight  of  horror.  On  one  side 
close  to  the  opening,  with  his  face  toward  the  opening,  lay 
what  was  apparently  a  dead  man.  His  jaw  had  dropped,  his 
eyes  were  open,  but  fixed  and  glassy,  his  limbs  were  motion- 
less. On  the  other  side  was  a  poor  fellow,  alive,  to  be  sure, 
but  without  hands  or  feet,  and  with  a  spoon  tied  to  the  stump 
of  his  right  arm.  Two  others  seated  on  the  ground  in  the 
middle  had  just  got  down  a  rubber  bottle,  that  hung  on  the 
tent-pole,  and  were  pouring  from  it  into  a  tin  can.  Directly 
opposite,  on  his  hands  and  knees,  was  a  dark  man,  with  a 
long,  matted  beard,  in  a  dirty  and  tattered  dressing  gown,  with 
a  little  red,  tattered  skull-cap  on  his  head  and  brilliant,  staring 
eyes.  As  Colwell  appeared  he  raised  himself  a  little  and  put 
on  a  pair  of  eye-glasses. 

"Who  are  you?"  asked  Colwell. 

The  man  made  no  reply,  staring  at  him  vacantly. 

"Who  are  you?"  again. 

One  of  the  men  spoke  up.    "That's  the  Major — Major  Greely." 

Colwell  crawled  in  and  took  him  by  the  hand,  saying :  "Greely, 
is  this  you?" 

"Yes,"  said  Greely  in  a  faint  voice,  hesitating  and  shuffling 
with  his  words,  *yes — seven  of  us  left — here  we  are — dying  like 
men.  Did  what  I  came  to  do.  Beat  the  best  record." 

Then  he  fell  back  exhausted. 

The  frightful  experience  of  the  Greely  party  did  not 
discourage  polar  exploration.  Men  of  many  races  took 
up  the  race  for  the  Pole,  and  Fridjof  Nansen,  of  Arctic 
Norway,  had  hardly  recorded  his  attainment  of  the 


222  THE  STORY   OF   OUR 

"farthest  north,"  86°,  14'  latitude,  when  the  Duke  of  the 
Abruzzi,  of  sunny  Italy,  wrested  away  his  laurels  by 
reaching  86°,  33'  north.  Rudolph  Andree,  in  1897,  put 
to  the  test  the  desperate  expedient  of  setting  out  for  the 
Pole  in  a  balloon  from  Dane's  Island,  Spitzbergen.  It 
•was  long  before  the  days  of  dirigibles  and  the  wind  that 
bore  Andree  swiftly  out  of  sight  carried  him  forever 
beyond  all  mortal  ken.  Now  and  then  rumors  have  come 
of  a  mysterious  white  man  abiding  among  the  Esquimaux 
of  the  frozen  North,  or  of  strange  relics  discovered  on 
the  crest  of  the  great  icepack.  But  nothing  definite  has 
been  learned  of  Andree  since  he  cast  off  his  cable  and 
committeed  himself  to  the  Arctic  gales. 

No  whit  discouraged  by  Andree's  fate  Walter  Well- 
man,  an  American  journalist,  planned  the  conquest  of 
the  Pole  by  balloon  in  1907.  The  chances  seemed  prom- 
ising for  Wellman,  for  the  notable  inventions  of  the 
Count  von  Zeppelin  had  made  the  dirigible  balloon  an 
accomplished  fact  since  Andree  had  committed  himself 
to  the  perilous  chances  of  a  mere  drifter.  But  while 
Wellman  developed  his  plans  with  the  utmost  care,  and 
blocked  out  a  line  of  attack  which  made  many  believe  he 
would  attain  the  prize,  nothing  but  ill- fortune  attended 
his  efforts.  Distrusting,  perhaps,  the  motive  power  of 
the  dirigible  he  had  constructed  he  spent  one  summer  at 
Dane's  Island,  near  Spitzbergen,  waiting  for  a  favoring 
breeze. '  The  following  year  he  was  about  to  start  when 
a  fierce  storm  wrecked  his  balloon  shed,  and  seriously 
crippled  his  ship.  Before  repairs  could  be  made  the 
Pole  was  discovered  by  Peary,  and  the  motive  for  further 
expeditions  was  ended.  It  was  perhaps  as  well  for  Well- 
man and  his  companions  that  they  were  balked  of  their 
Arctic  ambitions.  For  with  his  balloon  repaired,  and 
somewhat  improved  he  started  from  Atlantic  City  in  191 1 


MERCHANT  MARINE  223 

to  attempt  the  transatlantic  crossing.  His  craft,  however, 
proved  unmanageable  and  after  72  hours  in  the  air  he 
was  rescued,  with  his  ship's  company,  by  a  passing  ship. 
Not  long  after  his  chief  engineer,  Vanniman,  with  a  new 
dirigible  essayed  the  ocean  passage  only  to  be  lost,  with 
all  his  companions,  by  an  explosion  in  midair. 

The  story  of  these  futile  essays  in  Arctic  exploration 
has  been  told  hastily,  for  they  had  but  little  to  do  with 
American  merchant  seamen.  The  Greely  expedition  was 
military  in  its  character — only  its  relief  is  to  be  credited 
to  our  sailors. 

It  was,  however,  by  an  American  sailor,  Lieutenant 
Robert  E.  Peary,  U.  S.  N.,  commanding  American  crews, 
and  navigating  an  American  ship  that  the  actual  location 
of  the  North  Pole  was  finally  accomplished.  The  long 
list  of  contestants  for  that  honor  bears  the  names  of 
many  devoted  and  determined  men,  some  of  whom  gave 
up  their  lives  in  the  effort  to  extend  the  range  of  human 
knowledge  and  observation,  ever  further  and  further  into 
the  land  of  eternal  ice.  But  none  of  these  had  done 
more  in  the  way  of  courage,  determination  and  long  and 
persistent  effort  to  accomplish  victory  than  Peary  who 
finally  attained  it.  He  began  Arctic  exploration  in  1886. 
He  won  his  victory  in  1909.  For  almost  a  quarter  of 
a  century  he  had  battled  with  stormy  seas  and  resistless 
ice-floes,  or  had  endured  the  more  disheartening  strug- 
gles involved  in  raising  funds  at  home  foj  his  invasions 
of  the  Arctic.  Though  an  officer  of  the  navy,  his  expedi- 
tions were  never  governmental  affairs,  but  were  financed 
by  scientific  societies.  In  each  of  his  eight  trips  he  estab- 
lished scientific  facts  of  importance,  in  one  demonstrat- 
ing the  fact  that  Greenland  is  an  island,  in  another  dis- 
covering certain  huge  meteorites  and  learning  that  from 
them  the  Esquimaux  drew  the  supply  of  iron  with  which 


224  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

some  of  their  weapons  were  tipped.  No  explorer  so 
thoroughly  studied  the  habits  of  the  little  yellow  people 
who  inhabit  the  icy  reaches  beyond  the  Arctic  circle,  and 
in  his  later  expeditions  he  relied  much  upon  these  natives 
as  members  of  his  exploring  parties.  No  man  ever  made 
Arctic  life  so  thoroughly  his  own.  On  two  of  his  expedi- 
tions he  was  accompanied  by  his  wife,  and  one  daughter 
was  born  far  within  the  circle  of  the  Arctic  night. 

His  final  voyage  in  the  ship  "Roosevelt"  built  by  the 
Peary  Arctic  Club  took  him  to  Cape  Sheridan  where  he 
established  a  base  and  wintered.  In  February  he  started 
north  on  sledges  with  a  large  party,  from  which  detach- 
ments were  sent  back  from  time  to  time.  On  the  way 
back  they  established  stations  at  which  provisions  were 
cached  for  Peary's  use,  so  that  in  his  final  dash  for  the 
pole  he  might  be  little  burdened  with  supplies,  but  would 
find  all  needed  at  fixed  points  on  his  return  trip.  Day 
by  day  as  they  pressed  northward  over  the  ice  his  band 
became  smaller,  until  near  the  88th  parallel  he  sent  back 
Captain  Evelyn  B.  Baldwin,  with  a  number  of  Esqui- 
maux, and  himself,  with  four  of  the  natives  and  his 
negro  servant  pushed  on  to  the  northward.  He  had  left 
his  winter  base  with  a  force  of  7  white  men,  17  Esqui- 
maux and  33  dogs.  The  final  dash  was  made  in  five  days, 
the  party  covering  130  miles.  About  thirty  hours  were 
spent  at  and  about  the  Pole  making  observations  and 
erecting  a  memorial  cairn.  In  his  own  account  of  his 
triumph  Peary  is  disappointingly  reticent  concerning  his 
emotions  at  having  thus  attained  an  end  for  which  men 
had  fought  and  died  for  two  centuries.  Indeed,  he 
records  that  his  first  thought  was  that  he  could  now  get 
some  sleep,  while  the  following  note  to  his  wife,  written 
on  the  spot  to  be  mailed  on  regaining  civilization,  is  not 
at  all  suggestive  of  any  extraordinary  emotions: 


MERCHANT  MARINE  225 

90°  No.  Latitude,  Apl.  17. 
My  dear  Jo: 

I  have  won  out  at  last.  Have  been  here  a  day.  I  start  for 
home  and  you  in  an  hour.  Love  to  the  kidsies. 

BERT. 

A  weary  commercial  traveller  who  had  just  made  a 
difficult  sale  might  well  have  displayed  more  excitement 
and  enthusiasm. 

No  story  of  our  national  exploits  upon  the  sea  could 
be  complete  without  this  brief  survey  of  the  contribution 
of  our  seafaring  men  to  the  conquest  of  the  Arctic 
regions.  The  sailors  were  drawn  largely  from  our  mer- 
chant marine,  and  the  final  triumph  was  won  by  an  offi- 
cer of  our  navy.  It  is  not  the  only  record  of  adventure 
and  of  service  in  which  the  two  have  gone  hand  in  hand. 

The  earliest  explorers  of  Arctic  regions  had  an  eco- 
nomic purpose  animating  their  adventurous  endeavors. 
They  sought  a  shorter  way  around  the  North  American 
continent,  a  northwest  passage  to  that  eldorado  of  Asia 
and  India  which  has  for  centuries  been  the  magnet  that 
drew  merchant  adventurers  of  Europe  ever  to  the  west- 
ward. That  end  has  been  attained  by  the  simpler  process 
of  digging  ditches  at  Suez  and  at  Panama  to  let  the 
world's  freighted  argosies  pass.  It  is  doubtful  whether 
out  of  all  the  daring  with  which  men  have  braved  the 
perils  of  the  frozen  deep,  out  of  all  the  sufferings  which 
the  Ice  King  has  heaped  upon  those  who  invaded  his 
dreary  domain  there  has  come  any  useful  thing  to  man- 
kind. Hudson's  Bay,  it  is  true,  was  discovered  in  the 
course  of  a  voyage  of  Arctic  exploration,  and  efforts 
have  been  made  to  use  it  during  a  brief  open  season, 
for  a  quick  and  economical  all  water  route  from  the 
great  granary  of  Manitoba  to  the  markets  of  Europe. 
But  whether  this  route  will  ever  prove  commercially 
worth  while  it  is  too  early  to  determine. 


226  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

In  the  main,  the  expenditure  of  effort,  of  treasure 
and  of  life  in  the  polar  regions  must  be  set  down  as 
made  wholly  for  the  purpose  of  extending  human  knowl- 
edge into  uncharted  seas.  The  instinct  that  makes  us 
all  anxious  to  know  what  lies  around  the  bend  in  the 
road,  impelled  the  men  who  for  three  centuries  have  been 
trying  to  discover  what  lay  beyond  the  impenetrable  ice 
pack.  The  great  goal  has  been  won.  No  taint  of  un- 
certainty or  lack  of  scientific  precision,  rests  upon 
Peary's  discovery  of  the  Pole.  Yet  already  men  are 
planning  to  follow  his  course  through  the  air,  that  they 
may  have  more  time  for  observation  at  the  Pole,  and  in 
the  surrounding  regions. 

To  what  useful  end?  None  so  far  as  human  intelli- 
gence can  now  foresee.  But  the  zest  for  exploration 
and  discovery  beats  high  in  the  American  breast.  It  will 
be  a  sorry  thing  for  mankind  when  all  the  unknown 
places  have  been  surveyed  and  mapped.  For  then  the 
American  sailor,  by  sea  and  air,  will  be  left,  like  Alex- 
ander, sighing  for  more  worlds  to  conquer. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  GREAT  LAKES  — THEIR  SHARE  IN  THE  MARITIME  TRAFFIC 
OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  —  THE  EARLIEST  ^RECORDED  VOYAGERS 

—  INDIANS  AND  FUR  TRADERS  — THE  PIGMY  CANAL  AT  THE 
SAULT  STE.  MARIE  —  BEGINNINGS  OF  NAVIGATION  BY  SAILS  — 
DE  LA  SALLE  AND  THE  "  GRIFFIN  "  —  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  EARLY 
LAKE  SEAMEN  —  THE  LAKES  AS  A  HIGHWAY  FOR  WESTWARD 
EMIGRATION  —  THE  FIRST  STEAMBOAT  —  EFFECT  OF  MINERAL 
DISCOVERIES  ON  LAKE  SUPERIOR  —  THE  ORE-CARRYING  FLEET 

—  THE  WHALEBACKS  —  THE  SEAMEN  OF  THE  LAKES  —  THE 
GREAT  CANAL  AT  THE'*  Soo"  —  THE  CHANNEL  TO  BUFFALO  — 
BARRED  OUT  FROM  THE  OCEAN. 

TN  the  heart  of  the  North  American  Continent,  form- 
*•  ing  in  part  the  boundary  line  between  the  United 
States  and  the  British  possessions  to  the  north,  lies  that 
chain  of  great  freshwater  lakes  bordered  by  busy  and  rap- 
idly growing  commonwealths,  washing  the  water-fronts  of 
rich  and  populous  cities,  and  bearing  upon  their  steely 
blue  bosoms  a  commerce  which  outdoes  that  of  the  Med- 
iterranean in  the  days  of  its  greatest  glory.  The  old  salt, 
the  able  seaman  who  has  rounded  the  Horn,  the  skipper 
who  has  stood  unflinchingly  at  the  helm  while  the  green 
seas  towered  over  the  stern,  looks  with  contempt  upon 
the  fresh-water  sailor  and  his  craft.  Not  so  the  man  of 
business  or  the  statesman.  The_growth  of  lake  traffic  has 
been  one  of  the  most  marvelous  and  the  most  influential 
factors  in  the  industrial  development  of  the  United  States. 
By  it  has  been  systematized  and  brought  to  the  highest 
form  of  organization  the  most  economical  form  of  freight 
carriage  in  the  world.  Through  it  has  been  made  possible 


228  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

the  enormous  reduction  in  the  price  of  American  steel 
that  has  enabled  us  to  invade  foreign  markets,  and 
promises  to  so  reduce  the  cost  of  our  ships,  that  we  may 
be  able  to  compete  again  in  ship-building,  with  the  yards 
of  the  Clyde  and  the  Tyne.  Along  the  shores  of  these  un- 
salted  seas,  great  shipyards  are  springing  up,  that  already 
build  ships  more  cheaply  than  can  be  done  anywhere  else 
in  the  world,  and  despite  the  obstacles  of  shallow  canals, 
and  the  treacherous  channels  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  have 
been  able  to  build  and  send  to  tidewater,  ocean  ships  in 
competition  with  the  seacoast  builders.  The  present  of 
the  lake  marine  is  secure ;  its  future  is  full  of  promise.  Its 
story,  if  lacking  in  the  elements  of  romance  that  attend 
upon  the  ocean's  story,  is  well  worth  telling. 

A  decade  more  than  two  centuries  ago  a  band  of  Iro- 
quois  Indians  made  their  way  in  bark  canoes  from  Lake 
Ontario  up  Lake  Erie  to  the  Detroit  River,  across  Lake  St. 
Clair,  and  thence  through  Lake  Huron  to  Point  Iroquois. 
They  were  the  first  navigators  of  the  Great  Lakes,  and 
that  they  were  not  peace-loving  boatmen,  is  certain  from 
the  fact  that  they  traveled  all  these  miles  of  primeval 
waterway  for  the  express  purpose  of  battle.  History  re- 
cords that  they  had  no  difficulty  in  bringing  on  a  combat 
with  the  Illinois  tribes,  and  in  an  attempt  to  displace  the 
latter  from  Point  Iroquois,  the  invaders  were  destroyed 
after  a  six-days'  battle. 

It  is  still  a  matter  of  debate  among  philosophical  his- 
torians, whether  war,  trade,  or  missionary  effort  has  done 
the  more  toward  opening  the  strange,  wild  places  of  the 
world.  Each,  doubtless,  has  done  its  part,  but  we  shall 
find  in  the  story  of  the  Great  Lakes,  that  the  war  canoes 
of  the  savages  were  followed  by  the  Jesuit  missionaries, 
and  these  in  turn  by  the  bateaux  of  the  voyageurs  em- 
ployed by  the  Hudson  Bay  Company. 


MERCHANT   MARINE  229 

After  the  Iroquois  had  learned  the  way,  trips  of  war 
moes  up  and  down  the  lakes,  were  annual  occurrences, 
id  warfare  was  almost  perpetual.  In  1680  the  Iroquois, 
x>  strong,  invaded  Illinois,  killed  1200  of  the  tribe  there 
itablished,  and  drove  the  rest  beyond  the  Mississippi, 
or  years  after  the  Iroquois  nation  were  the  rulers  of  the 
ater-front  between  Lake  Erie  and  Lake  Huron.  While 
tis  tribe  was  in  undisputed  possession,  .commerce  had 
:tle  to  do  with  the  navigation  of  the  Great  Lakes.  The 
idians  went  up  and  down  the  shores  on  long  hunting 
ips,  but  war  was  the  principal  business,  and  every  canoe 
as  equipped  for  a  fray  at  any  time. 

A  story  is  told  of  a  great  naval  battle  that  was  fought 
i  Lake  Erie,  nearly  two  centuries  before  the  first  steamer 
.ade  its  appearance  on  that  placid  water.  A  Wyandot 
rince,  so  the  tale  goes,  fell  in  love  with  a  beautiful 
rincess  of  the  Seneca  tribe,  who  was  the  promised  bride 
I  a  chief  of  her  own  nation.  The  warrior  failed  to 
in  the  heart  of  the  dusky  maiden,  and  goaded  to  desper- 
ion,  entered  the  Senecas  country  by  night,  and  carried 
¥  the  lady.  War  immediately  followed,  and  was  prose- 
ited  with  great  cruelty  and  slaughter  for  a  long  time, 
t  last  a  final  battle  was  fought,  in  which  the  Wyandots 
ere  worsted  and  forced  to  flee  in  great  haste.  The  fugi- 
ves  planned  to  cross  the  ice  of  the  Straits  (Detroit) 
iver,  but  found  it  broken  up  and  floating  down  stream, 
heir  only  alternative  was  to  throw  themselves  on  the 
Dating  ice  and  leap  from  cake  to  cake;  they  thus  made 
icir  escape  to  the  Canadian  shore,  and  joined  the  tribes  of 
ic  Pottawatomies,  Ottawas,  and  Chippewas.  A  year 
.ter  the  Wyandots,  equipped  with  light  birch  canoes,  set 
nt  to  defeat  the  Senecas,  and  succeeded  in  inducing  them 
>  give  combat  on  the  water.  The  Senecas  made  a  fatal 
tistake  and  came  out  to  meet  the  enemy  in  their  clumsily- 


230  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

constructed  boats  hollowed  out  of  the  trunks  of  tree 
After  much  maneuvering  the  birch  canoe  fleet  proceede 
down  Lake  Erie  to  the  head  of  Long  Point,  with  tt 
Senecas  in  hot  pursuit.  In  the  center  of  the  lake  tt 
Wyandots  turned  and  gave  the  Senecas  so  hot  a  receptio 
that  they  were  forced  to  flee,  but  could  not  make  goo 
their  escape  in  their  clumsy  craft,  and  were  all  slain  bi 
one  man,  who  was  allowed  to  return  and  report  tr. 
catastrophe  to  his  own  nation.  This  closed  the  war. 

Legends  are  preserved  that  lead  to  the  belief  that  thei 
may  have  been  navigators  of  the  Great  Lakes  before  tt 
Indians,  and  it  is  generally  believed  that  the  latter  wei 
not  the  first  occupants  of  the  Lake  Superior  region.  It  : 
said  that  the  Lake  Superior  country  was  frequently  visite 
by  a  barbaric  race,  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  coppe 
and  it  is  quite  possible  that  these  people  may  have  bee 
skilled  navigators. 

Commercial  navigation  of  the  Great  Lakes,  curiousl 
enough,  first  assumed  importance  in  the  least  accessibl 
portion.  The  Hudson  Bay  Company,  always  extending  il 
territory  toward  the  northwest,  sent  its  bateaux  an 
canoes  into  Lake  Superior  early  in  the  seventeenth  cei 
tury.  To  accommodate  this  traffic  the  company  dug 
canal  around  the  falls  of  the  St.  Marie  River,  at  the  poh 
we  now  call  "the  Soo."  In  time  this  pigmy  progenitor  c 
the  busiest  canal  in  the  world,  became  filled  with  debri 
and  its  very  existence  forgotten;  but  some  years  ago 
student  in  the  thriving  town  of  Sault  Ste.  Marie,  porin 
over  some  old  books  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  notice 
several  references  to  the  company's  canal.  What  can; 
could  it  be  ?  His  curiosity  was  aroused,  and  wilh  the  ai 
of  the  United  States  engineers  in  charge  of  the  new  irr 
provements,  he  began  a  painstaking  investigation.  I 
time  the  line  of  the  old  ditch  was  discovered,  and,  indeec 


THE    WOODEN  UATEAUX    OE    THE    FUR    TRADERS. 


MERCHANT   MARINE  231 

it  was  no  more  than  a  ditch,  two  and  a  half  feet  deep,  by 
;  eight  or  nine  wide.  One  lock  was  built,  thirty-eight  feet 
long,  with  a  lift  of  nine  feet.  The  floor  and  sills  of  this 
lock  were  discovered,  and  the  United  States  Government 
has  since  rebuilt  it  in  stone,  that  visitors  to  the  Soo  may 
turn  from  the  massive  new  locks,  through  which  steel 
steamships  of  eight  thousand  tons  pass  all  day  long 
through  the  summer  months,  to  gaze  on  the  strait  and 
narrow  gate  which  once  opened  the  way  for  all  the  com- 
merce of  Lake  Superior.  But  through  that  gate  there 
passed  a  picturesque  and  historic  procession.  Canoes 
spurred  along  by  tufted  Indians  with  black-robed  Jesuit 
missionaries  for  passengers ;  the  wooden  bateaux  of  the 
fur  traders,  built  of  wood  and  propelled  by  oars,  and  car- 
rying gangs  of  turbulent  trappers  and  voyageurs;  the 
company's  chief  factors  in  swift  private  craft,  making  for 
the  west  to  extend  the  influence  of  the  great  corporation 
still  further  into  the  wilderness,  all  passed  through  the 
little  canal  and  avoided  the  roaring  waters  of  the  Ste. 
Marie.  It  was  but  a  narrow  gate,  but  it  played  its  part 
in  the  opening  of  the  West. 

War,  which  is  responsible  for  most  of  the  checks  to 
civilization,  whether  or  not  it  may  in  some  instances  ad- 
vance the  skirmish  line  of  civilized  peoples,  destroyed  the 
pioneer  canal.  For  in  1812  some  Americans  being  in  that 
part  of  the  country,  thought  it  would  be  a  helpful  contri- 
bution to  their  national  defense  if  they  blew  up  the 
lock  and  shattered  the  canal,  as  it  was  on  Canadian  soil. 
Accordingly  this  was  done,  of  course  without  the  slightest 
effect  on  the  conflict  then  raging,  but  much  to  the  discom- 
fort and  loss  of  the  honest  voyageurs  and  trappers  of  the 
Lake  Superior  region,  whose  interest  in  the  war  could 
hardly  have  been  very  serious. 

So  far  as  history  records  the  first  sailing  vessel  to 


232  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

spread  its  wings  on  the  Great  Lakes  beyond  Niagar 
Falls,  was  the  "Griffin/'  built  by  the  Chevalier  de  la  Sail 
in  1679,  near  tne  point  where  Buffalo  now  stands.  L 
Salle  had  brought  to  this  point  French  ship-builders  an 
carpenters,  together  with  sailors,  to  navigate  the  crai 
when  completed.  It  was  his  purpose  to  proceed  in  thi 
vessel  to  the  farthest  corners  of  the  Great  Lakes,  estab 
lish  trading  and  trapping  stations,  and  take  possession  c 
the  country  in  the  name  of  France.  He  was  himself  cor 
ciliatory  with  the  Indians  and  liked  by  them,  but  jealousie 
among  the  French  themselves,  stirred  up  savage  antag 
onism  to  him,  and  his  ship  narrowly  escaped  burnin 
while  still  on  the  stocks.  In  August  of  1679,  however,  sh 
was  launched,  a  brigantine  of  sixty  tons  burden,  mountin 
five  small  cannon  and  three  arquebuses.  Her  model  i 
said  to  have  been  not  unlike  that  of  the  caravels  in  whic 
Columbus  made  his  famous  voyage,  and  copies  of  whic 
were  exhibited  at  the  Columbian  Exposition.  Bow  an 
stern  were  high  and  almost  alike.  Yet  in  this  clums 
craft  La  Salle  voyaged  the  whole  length  of  Lake  Erii 
passed  through  the  Detroit  River,  and  St.  Clair  River  an 
lake ;  proceeded  north  to  Mackinaw,  and  thence  south  i 
Lake  Michigan  and  into  Green  Bay.  It  was  the  fin 
time  any  vessel  under  sail  had  entered  those  waters.  Map 
and  charts  there  were  none.  The  swift  rushing  watei 
of  the  Detroit  River  flowed  smoothly  over  limestone  reef; 
which  the  steamers  of  to-day  pass  cautiously,  despite  th 
Government  channels,  cut  deep  and  plainly  lighted.  Th 
flats,  that  broad  expanse  of  marsh  permeated  by  a  maz 
of  false  channels  above  Detroit,  had  to  be  threaded  wit 
no  chart  or  guide.  Yet  the  "Griffin"  made  St.  Ignace  i 
twenty  days  from  having  set  sail,  a  record  which  is  ofte 
not  equaled  by  lumber  schooners  of  the  present  tim< 
From  Green  Bay,  La  Salle  gent  the  vessel  back  with 


MERCHANT  MARINE  233 

cargo  of  furs  that  would  have  made  him  rich  for  life, 
had  it  ever  reached  a  market.  But  the  vessel  disappeared, 
and  for  years  nothing  was  heard  of  her.  Finally  La  Salle 
learned  that  a  half-breed  pilot,  who  had  shown  signs  of 
treachery  on  the  outward  trip,  had  persuaded  the  crew 
to  run  her  ashore  in  the  Detroit  River,  and  themselves  to 
take  the  valuable  cargo.  But  the  traitors  had  reckoned 
without  the  savage  Indians  of  the  neighborhood,  who 
also  coveted  the  furs  and  pelts.  While  the  crew  were 
trying  to  dispose  of  these  the  red  men  set  upon  them  and 
slew  them  all.  The  "Griffin"  never  again  floated  on  the 
lakes. 

It  is  difficult  to  determine  the  time  when  sailing  ves- 
sels next  appeared  upon  the  lakes,  but  it  was  certainly  not 
for  nearly  seventy-five  years.  Captain  Jonathan  Carver 
reported  a  French  schooner  on  Lake  Superior  about  1766, 
and  in  1772  Alexander  Harvey  built  a  forty-ton  sloop  on 
the  same  lake,  in  which  he  sought  the  site  of  a  famous 
copper  mine.  But  it  was  long  before  Lake  Superior 
showed  more  than  an  infrequent  sail,  though  on  Lake  Erie 
small  vessels  soon  became  common.  Even  in  1820  the  furs 
of  Lake  Superior  were  sent  down  to  Chicago  in  bateaux. 

Two  small  sailing  vessels,  the  "Beaver"  and  the  "Glad- 
win,"  which  proved  very  valuable  to  the  besieged  garri- 
son at  Detroit  in  1763,  were  the  next  sailing  vessels  on 
the  lakes,  and  are  supposed  to  have  been  built  by  the 
English  the  year  previous.  It  is  said,  that  through  the 
refusal  of  her  captain  to  take  ballast  aboard,  the  "Glad- 
win"  was  capsized  on  Lake  Erie  and  lost,  and  the  entire 
crew  drowned.  The  "Royal  Charlotte,"  the  "Boston," 
and  the  "Victory"  appeared  on  the  lakes  a  few  years 
later,  and  went  into  commission  between  Fort  Erie  (Buf- 
falo) and  Detroit,  carrying  the  first  year  1,464  bales  of 
fur  to  Fort  Erie,  and  practically  establishing  commercial 
navigation. 


234  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

It  is  hard  to  look  clearly  into  the  future.  If  the  recom- 
mendations of  one  J.  Collins,  deputy  surveyor-general  of 
the  British  Government,  had  governed  the  destiny  of  the 
Great  Lakes,  the  traffic  between  Buffalo  and  the  Soo  by 
water,  would  to-day  be  in  boats  of  fifteen  tons  or  less. 
Under  orders  of  the  English  Government,  Collins  in  1788 
made  a  survey  of  all  the  lakes  and  harbors  from  Kingston 
to  Mackinac,  and  in  his  report,  expressing  his  views  as  to 
the  size  of  vessels  that  should  be  built  for  service  on  the 
lakes,  he  said  he  thought  that  for  service  on  Lake  Ontario 
vessels  should  be  seventy-five  or  eighty  tons  burden,  and 
on  Lake  Erie,  if  expected  to  run  to  Lake  Huron,  they 
should  be  not  more  than  fifteen  tons.  What  a  stretch  of  im- 
agination is  necessary  to  conceive  of  the  great  volume  of 
traffic  of  the  present  time,  passing  Detroit  in  little  schoon- 
ers not  much  larger  than  catboats  that  skim  around  the 
lakes!  Imagine  such  a  corporation  as  the  Northern 
Steamship  Company,  with  its  big  fleet  of  steel  steamers, 
attempting  to  handle  its  freight  business  in  sailing  ves- 
sels of  a  size  that  the  average  wharf-rat  of  the  present 
time  would  disdain  to  pilot.  What  a  rush  of  business 
there  would  be  at  the  Marine  Post-Office  in  Detroit,  if 
some  day  this  company  would  decide  to  cut  off  three  of 
its  large  steamers  and  send  out  enough  schooners  of  the 
size  recommended  by  the  English  officer,  to  take  their 
place!  The  fleet  would  comprise  at  least  318  vessels,  and 
would  require  not  fewer  than  1500  seamen  to  navigate. 
It  is  sometimes  said  that  there  is  a  continual  panorama  of 
vessels  passing  up  and  down  the  rivers  of  the  Great 
Lakes,  but  what  if  the  Englishman  had  guessed  right? 
Happily  he  did  not,  and  vessels  of  1 500  tons  can  navigate 
the  connecting  waters  of  Lake  Huron  and  Lake  Erie 
much  better  than  those  of  fifteen  tons  could  in  his  time. 
That  the  early  ship-builders  did  not  pay  much  attention  to 


MERCHANT   MARINE 


235 


236  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

J.  Collins,  is  evident  from  the  fact  that,  when  the  Detroit 
was  surrendered  to  the  Americans  in  1796,  twelve  mer- 
chant vessels  were  owned  there  of  from  fifty  to  one 
hundred  tons  each. 

At  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  American 
sailor  had  hardly  superseded  the  red  men  as  a  navi- 
gator, and  lake  vessels  were  not  much  more  plentiful 
than  airships  are  nowadays.  Indeed,  the  entire  fleet  in 
1799,  so  far  as  can  be  learned,  was  as  follows :  The 
schooners  "Nancy,"  "Swan,"  and  "Naegel;"  the  sloops 
"Sagina,"  "Detroit,"  "Beaver,"  "Industry,"  "Speedwell," 
and  "Arabaska."  This  was  the  fleet,  complete,  of  Lakes 
Huron,  Erie,  and  Michigan. 

"A  wild-looking  set  were  the  first  white  sailors  of  the 
lakes,"  says  Hubbard  in  his  "Memorials  of  Half  a  Cen- 
tury." "Their  weirdness  was  often  enhanced  by  the  dash 
of  Indian  blood,  and  they  are  better  described  as  rangers 
of  the  woods  and  waters.  Picturesque,  too,  they  were  in 
their  red  flannel  or  leather  shirts  and  cloth  caps  of  some 
gay  color,  finished  to  a  point  which  hung  over  on  one  side 
with  a  depending  tassel.  They  had  a  genuine  love  for 
their  occupation,  and  muscles  that  never  seemed  to  tire 
at  the  paddle  and  oar.  These  were  not  the  men  who 
wanted  steamboats  and  fast  sailing  vessels.  These  men 
had  a  real  love  for  canoeing,  and  from  dawn  to  sunset, 
with  only  a  short  interval,  and  sometimes  no  midday  rest, 
they  would  ply  the  oars,  causing  the  canoe  or  barge  to 
shoot  through  the  water  like  a  thing  of  life,  but  often 
contending  against  head  winds  and  gaining  little  progress 
in  a  day's  rowing." 

One  of  the  earliest  American  sailors  on  a  lake  ship  big- 
ger than  a  bateau,  was  "Uncle  Dacy"  Johnson,  of  Cleve- 
land, who  sailed  for  fifty  years,  beginning  about  1850. 
"When  I  was  a  chunk  of  a  boy,"  says  the  old  Captain  in  a 


MERCHANT  MARINE 


237 


letter  to  a  New  York  paper,  "I  put  a  thirty-two  pound 
bundle  on  my  back  and  started  on  foot  to  Buffalo.  I  made 
the  journey  to  Albany,  N.  Y.,  from  Bridgeport,  Conn.,  in 
sixteen  days,  which  was  nothing  remarkable,  as  I  had  $3 
in  money,  and  a  bundle  of  food.  Many  a  poor 


ONE  OF  THE  FIRST  LAKE  SAILORS 

fellow  I  knew  started  on  the  same  journey  with  nothing 
but  an  axe.  When  I  arrived  at  Buffalo  I  found  a  very 
small  town — Cleveland,  Sandusky,  and  Erie,  were  all 
larger.  There  were  only  two  lighthouses  on  the  lakes, 
one  at  Buffalo,  which  was  the  first  one  built,  and  the 


238  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

other  one  at  Erie.  Buffalo  was  then  called  Fort  Erie,  and 
was  a  struggling  little  town.  My  first  trip  as  a  sailor  was 
made  from  Buffalo  to  Erie,  which  was  then  considered 
quite  a  voyage.  From  Buffalo  to  Detroit  was  looked 
upon  as  a  long  voyage,  and  a  vessel  of  thirty-two  tons  was 
the  largest  ship  on  the  lakes.  In  1813  I  was  one  of  a 
crew  of  four  who  left  Buffalo  on  the  sloop  'Commence- 
ment' with  a  cargo  of  whisky  for  Erie.  While  beating 
along  shore  the  English  frigate  'Charlotte'  captured  us 
and  two  boatloads  of  red-coats  boarded  our  vessel  and 
took  us  prisoners.  We  were  paroled  on  shipboard  the 
same  day,  and  before  night  concocted  a  scheme  to  get  the 
Englishmen  drunk  on  our  whisky.  One  of  our  fellows 
got  drunk  first,  and  told  of  our  intentions,  the  plot  was 
frustrated,  and  we  narrowly  escaped  being  hung." 

Once  begun,  the  conquest  of  the  lakes  as  a  highway 
for  trade  was  rapid.  We  who  live  in  the  days  of  rail- 
roads can  hardly  appreciate  how  tremendous  was  the  im- 
petus given  to  the  upbuilding  of  a  region  if  it  possessed 
practicable  waterways.  The  whole  history  of  the  settle- 
ment of  the  Middle  West  is  told  in  the  story  of  its  rivers 
and  lakes.  The  tide  of  immigration,  avoiding  the  dense 
forests  haunted  by  Indians,  the  rugged  mountains,  and 
the  broad  prairies  into  which  the  wheel  of  the  heavy-laden 
wagon  cut  deep,  followed  the  course  of  the  Potomac  and 
the  Ohio,  the  Hudson,  Mohawk,  and  the  Great  Lakes. 
Streams  that  have  long  since  ceased  to  be  thought  navi- 
gable for  a  boy's  canoe  were  made  to  carry  the  settlers' 
few  household  goods  heaped  on  a  flatboat.  The  flood 
of  families  going  West  created  a  demand  that  soon  cov- 
ered the/ lakes  with  schooners  and  brigs.  Landed  on  the 
lake  shore  near  some  little  stream,  the  immigrants  would 
build  flatboats,  and  painfully  pole  their  way  into  the  in- 
terior to  some  spot  that  took  their  fancy.  Ohio,  Indiana, 


MERCHANT   MARINE 


239 


240  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

Michigan,  and  Illinois  thus  filled  up,  towns  growing  by 
the  side  of  streams  now  used  only  to  turn  mill-wheels, 
but  which  in  their  day  determined  where  the  prosperous 
settlement  should  be. 

The  steamboat  was  not  slow  in  making  its  appearance 
on  the  lakes.  In  1818,  while  it  was  still  an  experiment 
on  the  seaboard,  one  of  these  craft  appeared  on  Lake 
Erie.  The  "Walk-in-the-Water"  was  her  name,  sug- 
gestive of  Indian  nomenclature  and,  withal,  exceedingly 
descriptive.  She  made  the  trip  from  Buffalo  to  Detroit, 
not  infrequently  taking  thirteen  days.  She  was  a  side- 
wheeler,  a  model  which  still  holds  favor  on  the  lower 
lakes,  though  virtually  abandoned  on  the  ocean  and  on 
Lake  Superior.  An  oil  painting  of  this  little  craft,  still 
preserved,  shows  her  without  a  pilot-house,  steered  by  a 
curious  tiller  at  the  stern,  with  a  smokestack  like  six 
lengths  of  stovepipe,  and  huge  unboxed  wheels.  She  is 
said  to  have  been  a  profitable  craft,  often  carrying  as 
many  as  fifty  passengers  on  the  voyage,  for  which  eight- 
een dollars  was  charged.  For  four  years  she  held  a 
monopoly  of  the  business.  Probably  the  efforts  of  Fulton 
and  Livingstone  to  protect  the  monopoly  which  had  been 
granted  them  by  the  State  of  New  York,  and  the  deter- 
mination of  James  Roosevelt  to  maintain  what  he  claimed 
to  be  his  exclusive  right  to  the  vertical  paddle-wheel,  de- 
layed the  extension  of  steam  navigation  on  the  lakes  as  it 
did  on  the  great  rivers.  After  four  years  of  solitary 
service  on  Lake  Erie,  the  "Walk-in-the-Water"  was 
wrecked  in  an  October  storm.  Crowded  with  passengers, 
she  rode  out  a  heavy  gale  through  a  long  night.  At  day- 
break the  cables  parted  and  she  went  ashore,  but  no  lives 
were  lost.  Her  loss  was  considered  an  irreparable 
calamity  by  the  settlers  at  the  western  end  of  the  lake. 
'This  accident,"  wrote  an  eminent  citizen  of  Detroit, 


MERCHANT   MARINE  241 

"may  be  considered  one  of  the  greatest  misfortunes  which 
has  ever  befallen  Michigan,  for,  in  addition  to  its  having 
deprived  us  of  all  certain  and  speedy  communication  with 
the  civilized  world,  I  am  fearful  it  will  greatly  check  the 
progress  of  immigration  and  improvement." 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  note  now  that  the  apprehen- 
sions of  the  worthy  citizen  of  Michigan  were  unfounded. 
Steam  navigation  on  the  lakes  was  no  more  killed  by  the 
loss  of  the  pioneer  craft  than  was  transatlantic  steam  navi- 
gation ended  by  the  disapproving  verdict  of  the  scientists. 
Nowhere  in  the  world  is  there  such  a  spectacle  of  mari- 
time activity,  nowhere  such  a  continuous  procession  of 
busy  cargo-ships  as  in  the  Detroit  River,  and  through  the 
colossal  locks  of  the  "Soo"  canals.  In  1827  the  first 
steamboat  reached  the  Sault  Ste.  Marie,  bearing  among 
her  passengers  General  Winfield  Scott,  on  a  visit  of  in- 
spection to  the  military  post  there,  but  she  made  no  effort 
to  enter  the  great  lake.  About  five  years  later,  the  first 
"smoke  boat,"  as  the  Indians  called  the  steamers,  reached 
Chicago,  the  pigmy  forerunner  of  the  fleet  of  huge  levia- 
thans that  all  the  summer  long,  nowadays,  blacken  Chi- 
cago's sky  with  their  torrents  of  smoke,  and  keep  the 
hurrying  citizens  fuming  at  the  open  draw  of  a  bridge. 
All  side-wheelers  were  these  pioneers,  wooden  of  course, 
and  but  sorry  specimens  of  marine  architecture,  but  they 
opened  the  way  for  great  things.  For  some  years  longer 
the  rushing  torrent  of  the  Ste.  Marie's  kept  Lake  Superior 
tightly  closed  to  steamboats,  but  about  1840  the  richness 
of  the  copper  mines  bordering  upon  that  lake  began  to 
attract  capital,  and  the  need  of  steam  navigation  became 
crying.  In  1845  men  determined  to  put  some  sort  of  a 
craft  upon  the  lake  that  would  not  be  dependent  upon  the 
whims  of  wind  and  sails  for  propulsion.  Accordingly, 
the  sloop  "Ocean,"  a  little  craft  of  fifteen  tons,  was  fitted 


242  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

out  with  an  engine  and  wheels  at  Detroit  and  towed  to  tHe 
"Soo."  There  she  was  dragged  out  of  the  water  and 
made  the  passage  between  the  two  lakes  on  rollers.  The 
"Independence,"  a  boat  of  about  the  same  size,  was 
treated  in  the  same  way  later  in  the  year.  Scarcely  any- 
thing in  the  history  of  navigation,  unless  it  be  the  first 
successful  application  of  steam  to  the  propulsion  of 
boats  is  of  equal  importance  with  the  first  appear- 
ance of  steamboats  in  Lake  Superior.  It  may  be 
worth  while  to  abandon  for  a  moment  the  orderly  his- 
torical sequence  of  this  narrative,  to  emphasize  the  won- 
derful contrast  between  the  commerce  of  Lake  Superior 
in  the  days  of  the  "Independence"  and  now — periods 
separated  by  scarcely  sixty  years.  To-day  the  commerce 
of  that  lake  is  more  than  half  of  all  the  great  lakes  com- 
bined. It  is  conducted  in  steel  vessels,  ranging  from  1500 
to  8500  tons,  and  every  year  sees  an  increase  in  their  size. 
In  1901  more  than  27,000,000  tons  of  freight  were  carried 
in  Lake  Superior  vessels,  a  gain  of  nearly  3,000,000 
over  the  year  before.  The  locks  in  the  "Soo"  canal, 
of  which  more  later,  have  twice  had  to  be  enlarged,  while 
the  Canadian  Government  has  built  a  canal  of  its  own  on 
the  other  side  of  the  river.  The  discovery  and  develop- 
ment of  the  wonderful  deposits  of  iron  ore  at  the  head  of 
the  lake  have  proved  the  greatest  factors  in  the  upbuilding 
of  its  commerce,  and  the  necessity  for  getting  this  ore 
to  the  mills  in  Illinois,  Ohio,  and  Pennsylvania,  has  re- 
sulted in  the  creation  of  a  class  of  colossal  cargo-carriers 
on  the  lake  that  for  efficiency  and  results,  though  not  for 
beauty,  outdo  any  vessel  known  to  maritime  circles. 

Now  that  the  Panama  Canal  is  a  completed  high- 
way of  commerce  open  to  all  nations,  and  the  United 
States  is  considering  the  part  it  may  play  in  extend- 
ing our  merchant  marine,  there  is  suggestiveness 


MERCHANT  MARINE  243 

in  the  part  that  the  canal  at  the  "Soo"  played  in  stimulat- 
ing lake  commerce.  Until  it  was  dug,  the  lake  fleets  grew 
but  slowly,  and  the  steamers  were  but  few  and  far  be- 
tween. Freight  rates  were  high,  and  the  schooners  and 


A    VANISHING    TYPE   ON    THE    LAKES 

sloops  made  but  slow  passages.  From  an  old  bill,  of  about 
J835,  we  learn  that  freight  rates  between  Detroit  and 
Cleveland,  or  Lake  Erie  points  and  Buffalo,  were  about 
as  follows :  Flour,  thirty  cents  a  barrel ;  all  grain,  ten  cents 


244  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

a  bushel;  beef,  pork,  ashes,  and  whisky,  thirteen  cents  a 
hundred  pounds ;  skins  and  furs,  thirty-one  cents  a  hun- 
dred weight;  staves,  from  Detroit  to  Buffalo,  $6.25  a 
thousand.  In  1831  there  were  but  in  vessels  of  all 
sorts  on  the  lakes.  In  five  years,  the  fleet  had  grown  to 
262,  and  in  1845,  the  year  when  the  first  steamer  entered 
Lake  Superior,  to  493.  In  1855,  the  year  the  "Soo"  canal 
was  opened,  there  were  in  commission  1196  vessels,  steam 
and  sail,  on  the  unsalted  seas.  Then  began  the  era  of 
prodigious  development,  due  chiefly  to  that  canal  which 
Henry  Clay,  great  apostle  as  he  was  of  internal  improve- 
ments, said  would  be  beyond  the  remotest  range  of  settle- 
ments in  the  United  States  or  in  the  moon. 

At  the  head  of  Lake  Superior  are  almost  illimitable 
beds  of  iron  ore  which  looks  like  rich  red  earth,  and  is 
scooped  up  by  the  carload  with  steam  shovels.  Tens  of 
thousands  of  men  are  employed  in  digging  this  ore  and 
transporting  it  to  the  nearest  lake  port — Duluth  and  West 
Superior  being  the  largest  shipping  points.  Railroads 
built  and  equipped  for  the  single  purpose  of  carrying  the 
ore  are  crowded  with  rumbling  cars  day  and  night,  and 
at  the  wharves  during  the  eight  or  nine  months  of  the 
year  when  navigation  is  open  lie  great  steel  ships,  five  hun- 
dred feet  long,  with  a  capacity  of  from  six  thousand  to 
nine  thousand  tons  of  ore.  Perhaps  in  no  branch  of 
marine  architecture  has  the  type  best  fitted  to  the  need 
been  so  scientifically  determined  as  in  planning  these  ore 
boats.  They  are  cargo  carriers  only,  and  all  considera- 
tions of  grace  or  beauty  are  rigidly  eliminated  from  their 
design.  The  bows  are  high  to  meet  and  part  the  heavy 
billows  of  the  tempestuous  lakes,  for  they  are  run  as  late 
into  the  stormy  fall  and  early  winter  season  as  the  ice  will 
permit.  From  the  forward  quarter  the  bulwarks  are  cut 
away,  the  high  bow  sheltering  the  forecastle  with  the 


MERCHANT  MARINE  '243 

crews,  while  back  of  it  rises  a  deck-house  of  steel,  con- 
taining the  officers'  rooms,  and  bearing  aloft  the  bridge 
and  wheel-house.  Three  hundred  feet  further  aft  rises 
another  steel  deck-house,  above  the  engine,  and  between 
extends  the  long,  flat  deck,  broken  only  by  hatches  every 
few  feet,  battened  down  almost  level  with  the  deck  floor. 
During  the  summer,  all  too  short  for  the  work  the  busy 
iron  carriers  have  to  do,  these  boats  are  run  at  the  top 
of  their  speed,  and  on  schedules  that  make  the  economy 
of  each  minute  essential.  So  they  are  built  in  such  fashion 
as  to  make  loading  as  easy  and  as  rapid  as  possible.  Some- 
times there  are  as  many  as  fourteen  or  sixteen  hatches  in 
one  of  these  great  ships,  into  each  of  which  while  loading 
the  ore  chutes  will  be  pouring  their  red  flood,  and  out  of 
each  of  which  the  automatic  unloaders  at  Cleveland  or 
Erie  will  take  ten-ton  bites  of  the  cargo,  until  six  or  seven 
thousand  tons  of  iron  ore  may  be  unloaded  in  eight  hours. 
The  hold  is  all  one  great  store-room,  no  deck  above  the 
vessel's  floor  except  the  main  deck.  No  water-tight  com- 
partments or  bulkheads  divide  it  as  in  ocean  ships,  and 
all  the  machinery  is  placed  far  in  the  stern.  The  vessel  is 
simply  a  great  steel  packing-box,  with  rounded  ends,  made 
strong  to  resist  the  shock  of  waves  and  the  impact  of 
thousands  of  tons  of  iron  poured  in  from  a  bin  as  high 
above  the  floor  as  the  roof  of  a  three-story  building.  With 
vessels  such  as  these,  the  cost  of  carrying  ore  has  been 
reduced  below  the  level  of  freight  charges  in  any  part  of 
the  world. 

Yet  comfort  and  speed  are  by  no  means  overlooked. 
The  quarters  of  the  officers  and  men  are  superior  to  those 
provided  on  most  of  the  ocean  liners,  and  vastly  better 
than  anything  offered  by  the  "ocean  tramps."  Many  of 
the  ships  have  special  guest-cabins  fitted  up  for  their 
owners,  rivalling  the  cabins  de  luxe  of  the  ocean  grey- 


246  THE  STORY  OF   OUR 

hounds.  The  speed  of  the  newer  ships  will  average  from 
fourteen  to  sixteen  knots,  and  one  of  them  in  a  season  will 
make  as  many  as  twenty  round  trips  between  Duluth  and 
Cleveland.  Often  one  will  tow  two  great  steel  barges 
almost  as  large  as  herself,  great  ore  tanks  without  ma- 
chinery of  any  kind  and  mounting  two  slender  masts 
chiefly  for  signaling  purposes,  but  also  for  use  in  case 
of  being  cut  adrift.  For  a  time,  the  use  of  these  barges, 
with  their  great  stowage  capacity  in  proportion  to  their 
total  displacement,  was  thought  to  offer  the  cheapest  way 
of  carrying  ore.  One  mining  company  went  very  heavily 
into  building  these  craft,  figuring  that  every  steamer  could 
tow  two  or  three  of  them,  giving  thus  for  each  engine  and 
crew  a  load  of  perhaps  twenty-four  thousand  tons.  But, 
seemingly,  this  expectation  has  been  disappointed,  for 
while  the  barges  already  constructed  are  in  active  use, 
most  of  the  companies  have  discontinued  building  them. 
For  a  time  it  looked  as  if  the  favorite  design  for  ore 
and  coal-carrying  ships  might  be  the  so-called  "whale- 
back"  type — which  the  lake  sailors  called  "pigs"  because 
of  their  blunt  and  snout-like  bows.  These  craft  are  built 
of  steel,  with  a  low  freeboard  and  a  curved  deck  not 
unlike  that  of  the  submarine  made  familiar  in  the  late 
war.  The  first  of  these  ships,  "the  101,"  had  a  curious 
history.  Its  plates  were  forged  at  Cleveland,  O.,  its  bow 
and  stern  built  at  Wilmington,  Del.,  the  ship  was  put 
together  and  launched  at  Duluth,  Minn.;  and  the  craft 
after  service  on  the  Lakes  was  taken  to  sea,  around 
Cape  Horn,  and  cast-a-way  on  the  Pacific  coast,  near  the 
State  of  Washington.  The  advantages  of  economy  and 
efficiency  claimed  for  the  whalebacks  must  have  failed 
to  materialize  for  the  type  is  no  longer  being  built.  The 
largest  ever  constructed  was  430  feet  over  all,  and  with 
a  capacity  of  8,000  tons.  One  passenger  vessel  of  this 


MERCHANT  MARINE 


247 


type  was  built,  but  had  no  special  advantages  over  the 
ordinary  sort  of  excursion  ship. 

The  iron  traffic  which  has  grown  to  such  huge  propor- 
tions, and  resulted  in  the  creation  of  a  type  of  marine 
architecture  especially  adapted  to  its  needs,  began  in  1856, 
when  the  steamer  Ontonagon  shipped  296  tons  of  iron 
ore  at  Duluth.  To-day  one  ship  of  a  fleet  numbering 
hundreds  will  carry  thirteen  thousand  tons,  and  make 
twenty  round  trips  between  the  iron  fields  of  Minnesota 


THE   "WHALEBACK 


and  the  ports  on  Lake  Erie  during  the  seven  months  of 
navigation. 

These  great  ore  carriers  are  excelled  in  impressive- 
ness  only  by  great  battleships.  Lacking  the  beauty  or 
grace  of  true  ocean  liners  they  compel  admiration  for 
their  size  and  power.  Everything  is  sacrificed  to  carry- 
ing capacity  and  facility  in  loading  and  unloading.  The 
engines  are  placed  close  to  the  stern,  thus  doing  away 
with  the  long  propeller  sha'ft  which  the  centrally  placed 


248  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

engines  on  ocean  liners  compels.  Forward  of  the  engine 
house  is  a  long  expanse  of  flat  deck,  broken  only  by 
hatch  combings  rising  perhaps  a  foot  above  the  level. 
There  will  be  often  550  feet  in  the  clear  of  this  deck, 
60  feet  wide  extending  forward  to  the  main  deck  house, 
or  forecastle,  which  will  rise  60  feet  or  more  above  the 
water,  and  houses  the  officers5  quarters,  chart  room  and 
wheel-house.  Light  spars  only  are  carried  for  signalling* 
•purposes.  Such  a  ship  with  engines  of  2,000  horse- 
power, and  a  speed  of  10  knots  or  even  more,  can  be 
loaded  with  13,000  tons  of  ore  in  two  hours  and  a  half, 
and  unloaded  with  even  more  celerity.  Speed  counts 
for  much  on  the  Lakes  where  traffic  is  blocked  by  ice 
for  five  months  of  the  year. 

Duluth,  whence  is  shipped  most  of  the  iron  ore,  has 
come  to  be  the  second  port  in  the  world  in  point  of  ton- 
nage. In  1917  it  was  estimated  that  700  tons  of  freight 
were  loaded  or  unloaded  at  the  Duluth-Superior  docks 
every  minute  of  a  24-hour  day,  throughout  the  season. 
The  lake  shipping  handles  more  than  100,000,000  tons  of 
freight  annually,  and  at  a  cost  which  would  stagger 
ocean  shipping  men  by  its  cheapness.  Prior  to  the  war 
a  rate  of  98/100  of  a  cent  per  ton,  per  mile  produced  a 
profit  for  the  lake  shipowner.  In  1918  the  eastbound 
traffic  through  the  canals  at  Sault  Ste  Marie  aggregated 
65,367,056  tons;  westbound  19,310,513.  The  passengers 
carried  exceeded  17,000  annually.  Before  this  record 
the  10,000,000  tons  annually  of  the  Suez  Canal  sinks  into 
a  decided  second  place. 

Although  under  pressure  of  the  war-time  emergency 
some  wooden  ships  were  built  in  Great  Lakes  shipyards 
during  the  years  1916-19  the  great  maritime  industry 
there  has  been  the  construction  of  steel  ships.  So  great 
have  become  the  facilities  of  the  lake  yards  that,  save 


MERCHANT  MARINE  249 

for  the  physical  conditions  which  bar  the  egress  of  large 
cargo  ships  from  the  Lakes  to  the  ocean,  they  would  be 
serious  competitors  for  the  shipbuilding  trade  of  the 
world.  Two  canals  to-day  effect  connection  between  the 
unsalted  seas  and  tide  water.  The  greater  one,  the  New 
York  barge  canal,  connecting  Lake  Erie  and  Lake  On- 
tario with  the  Hudson  River  at  Troy,  is  not  designed  for 
the  accommodation  of  ships.  Its  depth  is  but  14  feet, 
and  the  bridges  by  which  it  is  spanned — in  the  planning 
of  which  hostile  railroad  influences  are  believed  to  have 
had  a  hand — are  too  low  to  permit  the  passage  of  any 
save  barges  with  a  low  freeboard.  The  other  canal — 
the  Welland — is  a  true  ship  canal,  though  of  very  inade- 
quate capacity.  It  is  owned  by  the  Canadian  Government 
and  traverses  Canadian  territory  only.  Its  locks  fix 
arbitrarily  the  size  of  lake-built  vessels  that  may  pass 
from  the  Lakes  to  the  sea.  A  length  of  261  feet,  and  a 
beam  of  42  feet  6  inches  is  the  limit.  Although  the 
great  yards  at  Chicago,  Detroit  and  Cleveland  are  turn- 
ing out  magnificent  ore-carriers  of  more  than  13,000  tons 
displacement,  ships  designed  for  ocean  use  cannot  be  of 
more  than  3,500  to  4,000  tons. 

There  is  a  certain  pathos  about  the  efforts  of  the 
lake  builders  and  shipping  men  to  reach  the  sea  with 
their  ships.  The  practice  of  cutting  great  steel  vessels 
in  two,  closing  up  the  severed  ends  with  bulk-heads  and 
sending  them  through  the  canal  to  be  put  together  again 
at  tide-water  on  the  St.  Lawrence  has  become  so  common 
as  to  attract  no  special  attention.  In  1918  the  bow 
half  of  one  ship  and  the  after  section  of  another  were 
cast  away  in  a  gale  with  serious  loss  of  life — disasters 
which  surely  deserve  to  rank  with  the  most  curious 
casualties  of  the  sea.  During  the  war  steamers  were  built 
with  this  purpose  in  view,  and  carried  as  part  of  their 


250  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 


load  the  fabricated  plates  which  would  be  used  to  lengthen 
them.  About  95  feet  was  usually  added  to  their  length  in 
this  way.  But  the  width  of  the  docks  permitted  the 
passage  of  ships  of  42  feet  beam  only.  No  process  of 
reconstruction  could  economically  increase  this  beam, 
and  that  in  turn  limited  the  extent  to  which  the  ships 
might  be  lengthened.  A  curious  effort  to  overcome  this 
situation  was  made  in  1918  in  the  case  of  a  ship  that  was 
both  too  long  and  too  broad  to  pass  the  Welland  locks. 
She  was  cut  in  two — thus  reducing  the  length  to  prac- 
ticable proportions.  But  the  sections  were  still  too  broad. 
It  was  believed  that  if  tilted  on  one  side — or  on  their 
beam-ends  as  sailors  would  say — these  sections  would  be 
narrow  enough  to  pass  through  the  docks,  and  not  be  too 
deep  for  the  draught  of  the  canal.  The  cutting  and 
capsizing  were  done,  but  unfortunately  this  work  was  not 
completed  before  the  severe  winter  weather  of  that  region 
closed  the  canal  to  navigation.  One  section  of  the  ship, 
however,  was  successfully  put  through  the  locks,  thus 
demonstrating  the  feasibility  of  the  plan.  The  second 
section  will  doubtless  follow  in  the  summer  of  1919. 

The  steady  and  persistent  efforts  made  to  open  a  way 
for  shipping  from  the  Great  Lakes  to  the  sea  affords  the 
best  possible  evidence  of  the  need  for  it.  The  producers 
of  our  great  West,  with  its  illimitable  possibilities  as  a 
food-producing  region  must  always  look  to  foreign  lands 
for  much  of  their  market.  They  beat  against  the  barrier 
placed  by  nature  at  Niagara  as  a  caged  animal  beats 
against  the  bars  of  its  prison.  History  has  shown  many 
European  peoples,  shut  off  from  the  sea  by  diplomatic 
intrigue,  rushing  into  war  in  order  to  secure  access  to 
the  highway  of  nations.  It  has,  therefore,  come  to  be  an 
axiom  in  the  plans  for  the  reconstruction  of  Europe  that 
no  people  can  safely  be  excluded  from  the  coast.  The 


MERCHANT  MARINE  251 

people  of  our  Middle  West  are  thus  excluded  by  nature, 
and  will  not  be  content  until  the  barrier  is  thrown  down. 
The  economic  advantage  to  our  country  of  a  deep 
waterway  eastward  from  Lake  Erie,  so  that  ships  draw- 
ing not  less  than  30  feet  of  water  may  go  from  Duluth  to 
the  open  ocean  is  so  great  that  the  construction  of  such 
a  public  work  cannot  long  be  deferred.  The  Panama 
Canal  for  which  our  Government  expended  more  than 
$400,000,000  can  confer  nothing  like  the  benefit  upon 
our  people  which  such  an  outlet  for  our  products  would 
render.  Except  for  the  wholly  mercenary  and  selfish 
opposition  of  the  great  railroads  of  the  country,  such  a 
canal  would  long  since  have  been  built.  Fearing  that  the 
Panama  Canal  would  break  their  monopoly  of  transcon- 
tinental rates  they  fought  that  great  public  undertaking 
for  decades.  They  have  been  fighting  and  still  are  fight- 
ing the  construction  of  a  "Lakes-to-the-Sea"  canal  by 
the  same  methods.  It  is  asserted,  and  with  some  cor- 
roborative evidence,  that  the  construction  of  the  New 
York  State  barge  canal  was  part  of  the  railroad  crusade 
against  a  true  ship  canal  through  the  same  territory. 
Surveys  had  been  made  showing  the  feasibility  of  a  canal 
of  35  feet  in  depth  from  the  Lakes  to  the  head  of  deep 
water  navigation  on  the  Hudson.  Legislation  was  offered 
in  Congress  providing  for  its  construction  at  the  joint 
cost  of  the  nation  and  the  State.  Suddenly  the  barge 
canal  proposition  appeared  in  the  New  York  legislature, 
and  went  through  with  a  degree  of  ease  that  might  well 
have  aroused  suspicion.  After  the  expenditure  of  nearly 
$150,000,000  New  York  has  a  barge  canal  only  14  feet 
deep  on  which  at  present  there  is  no  considerable  traffic, 
and  which  shipping  men  say  will  never  lend  itself  to  prof- 
itable operation.  It  is  feared  that  the  State  will  be  slow 
to  consider  the  expenditure  of  millions  more  on  a  real 


252  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

ship  canal.  Nevertheless  it  is  certain  that  in  the  early 
future  this  situation  will  be  corrected  despite  railroad 
efforts  to  continue  it.  For  that  section  of  the  country 
which  would  be  benefited  by  the  creation  of  a  deep 
waterway  to  the  sea  will  not  be  contented  until  it  is  at- 
tained. The  New  York  barge  canal  will  when  that  time 
comes  not  represent  entirely  wasted  effort  for  any  such 
channel  would  necessarily  follow  its  line,  and  the  work 
already  done  would  be  a  step  toward  the  creation  of  the 
greater  waterway,  even  as  the  French  work  at  Panama 
was  of  the  utmost  assistance  in  completing  the  Ameri- 
can canal. 

We  may  take  the  great  bulk  of  the  traffic  of  the  Lakes 
as  originating  at  Duluth  at  the  head  of  Lake  Superior. 
Thence  are  shipped  now  enormous  quantities  of  iron 
ore,  and  wheat  from  the  fertile  regions  extending  for 
hundreds  of  miles  about.  The  iron  ore  is  mainly  un- 
loaded at  northern  Ohio  ports  for  domestic  use,  but  the 
wheat  to  a  great  extent  goes  on  to  Europe.  It  must 
be  unloaded  from  the  ships  at  Buffalo,  loaded  into  cars 
or  canal  boats,  to  be  rehandled  at  the  docks  in  New  York. 
The  cost  of  these  repeated  transshipments  almost  equals 
the  cost  of  carriage.  With  a  ship  canal  to  tide-water 
this  cost  would  be  averted. 

What  a  canal  may  do  to  encourage  commerce  is 
shown  by  the  record  of  the  canal  at  Sault  Ste  Marie. 

It  had  its  origin  in  a  gift  of  750,000  acres  of  public 
lands  from  the  United  States  Government  to  the  State 
of  Michigan.  The  State,  in  its  turn,  passed  the  lands 
on  to  a  private  company  which  built  the  canal.  This 
work  was  wholly  unsatisfactory,  and  very  wisely  the 
Government  took  the  control  of  this  artificial  waterway 
out  of  private  hands  and  assumed  its  management  itself. 
At  once  it  expended  about  $8,000,000  upon  the  enlarge- 


MERCHANT   MARINE  253 

ment  and  improvement  of  the  canal.  Scarcely  was  it 
opened  before  the  ratio  at  which  the  traffic  increased 
showed  that  it  would  not  long  be  sufficient.  Enlarged  in 
1881,  it  gave  a  capacity  of  from  fourteen  feet,  nine  inches 
to  fiteen  feet  in  depth,  and  with  locks  only  four  hundred 
feet  in  length.  Even  a  ditch  of  this  size  proved  ot  in- 
estimable value  in  helping  vessels  to  avoid  the  eighteen 
feet  drop  between  Lake  Superior  and  Lake  Huron.  By 
1886  the  tonnage  which  passed  through  the  canal  each 
year  exceeded  9,000,000,  and  then  for  the  first  time 
this  great  waterway  with  a  season  limited  to  eight  or  nine 
months,  exceeded  in  the  volume  of  its  traffic  the  great 
Suez  Canal.  But  shippers  at  once  began  to  complain  of 
its  dimensions.  Vessels  were  constantly  increasing  both 
in  length  and  in  draught,  and  the  development  of  the 
great  iron  fields  gave  assurance  that  a  new  and  prodigious 
industry  would  add  largely  to  the  size  of  the  fleet,  which 
up  to  that  time  had  mainly  been  employed  in  carrying 
grain.  Accordingly  the  Government  rebuilt  the  locks 
until  they  now  are  one  hundred  feet  in  width,  twenty-one 
feet  deep  and  twelve  hundred  feet  long.  Immediately 
vessels  were  built  of  a  size  which  tests  even  this  great 
capacity,  and  while  the  traffic  through  De  Lessep's 
famous  canal  at  Suez  has  for  a  decade  remained  almost 
stationary,  being  9,308,152  tons  in  1900,  the  traffic 
through  the  "Soo"  has  increased  in  almost  arithmetical 
proportion  every  year,  attaining  in  1917  56,399,147  tons, 
carried  in  21,233  vessels — or  more  than  the  combined 
tonnage  of  the  Suez,  Kiel  and  Manchester  canals,  though 
the  "Soo"  is  closed  four  months  in  the  year.  Through  the 
Detroit  River  passed  in  1915  a  tonnage  of  65,280,425. 

The  Great  Lakes  fleet  which  in  June,  1914,  numbered 
2,339  steam  vessels  of  2,523,517  tons  has  not  gained 
greatly  since  that  time.  Every  ship  that  could  be  taken 


254  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

to  salt  water  by  hook  or  by  crook  has  been  put  into  inter- 
national trade.  Though  the  lake  shipyards  have  been 
working  overtime  it  has  been  mainly  upon  ships  that 
might  be  put  in  international  trade.  Some  of  these  may 
be  returned  to  the  fresh  water  seas  but  it  is  unlikely,  for 
the  traffic  of  these  waterways  demands  a  different  type 
of  craft. 

Though  the  old  salt  may  sneer  at  the  freshwater  sailor 
who  scarcely  need  know  how  to  box  the  compass,  to 
whom  the  art  of  navigation  is  in  the  main  the  simple 
practise  of  steering  from  port  to  port  guided  by  headlands 
and  lights,  who  is  seldom  long  out  of  sight  of  land,  and 
never  far  from  aid,  yet  the  perils  of  the  Lakes  are  quite 
as  real  as  those  which  confront  the  ocean  seaman,  and 
the  skill  and  courage  necessary  for  withstanding  them 
quite  as  great  as  his.  The  sailor's  greatest  safeguard  in 
time  of  tempest  is  plenty  of  searoom.  This  the  lake  navi- 
gator never  has.  For  him  there  is  always  the  dreaded 
lee  shore  only  a  few  miles  away.  Anchorage  on  the 
sandy  bottom  of  the  Lakes  is  treacherous,  and  harbors 
are  but  few  and  most  difficult  of  access.  Where  the 
ocean  sailor  finds  a  great  bay,  perhaps  miles  in  extent, 
entered  by  a  gateway  thousands  of  yards  across,  offering 
a  harbor  of  refuge  in  time  of  storm,  the  lake  navigator 
has  to  run  into  the  narrow  mouth  of  a  river,  or  round 
under  the  lee  of  a  government  breakwater  hidden  from 
sight  under  the  crested  waves  and  offering  but  a  pre- 
carious shelter  at  best. 

For  forty  years  it  has  been  possible  to  say  almost 
every  year,  "This  is  the  greatest  year  in  the  history  of  the 
lake  marine."  For  essentially  it  is  a  new  and  a  growing 
factor  in  the  industrial  development  of  the  United  States. 
So  far,  from  having  been  killed  by  the  prodigious  devel- 
opment of  our  railroad  system,  it  has  kept  pace  with  that 


MERCHANT  MARINE  255 

system,  and  the  years  that  have  seen  the  greatest  number 
of  miles  of  railroad  built,  have  witnessed  the  launching 
of  the  biggest  lake  vessels.  A  recent  act  of  Congress  pro- 
hibited to  railroads  the  right  to  own  and  operate  ships. 
This  has  already  caused  a  change  in  ownership  of  lake 
vessels  but  does  not  seem  likely  to  check  new  construc- 
tion. There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  this  growth 
|  will  for  a  long  time  be  persistent,  that  the  climax  has  not 
j  yet  been  reached.  For  it  is  incredible  that  the  Govern- 
ment will  permit  the  barrier  at  Niagara  to  the  commerce 
of  these  great  inland  seas  to  remain  long  unbroken. 
The  richest  coast  in  the  world  is  that  bordering  on  the 
Lakes.  The  cheapest  ships  in  the  world  can  there  be 
built.  Already  the  Government  has  spent  its  tens  and 
scores  of  millions  in  providing  waterways  from  the 
extreme  northwest  end  to  the  southeastern  extremity  of 
this  water  system,  and  it  is  unbelievable  that  it  shall  long 
remain  violently  stopped  there.  New  devices  for  digging 
canals,  such  as  those  employed  in  the  Chicago  drainage 
channel,  and  the  new  pneumatic  lock,  the  power  and  ca- 
pacity of  which  seem  to  be  practically  unlimited,  have 
vastly  decreased  the  cost  of  canal  building,  and  multiplied 
amazingly  the  value  of  artificial  waterways.  As  it  is  ad- 
mitted that  the  greatness  and  the  wealth  of  New  York 
State  are  much  to  be  credited  to  the  Erie  Canal,  so  the 
prosperity  and  populousness  of  the  whole  lake  region 
will  be  enhanced  when  lake  sailors  and  lake  ships  may 
pass  unrestricted  to  the  ocean  and  to  the  ports  of  the 
whole  world. 

It  is  little  short  of  amazing  how  little  informed  the 
American  people  as  a  whole  are  as  to  the  proportions 
attained  by  our  lake  shipping.  We  are  impressed  by  the 
achievement  of  De  Lesseps  in  opening,  by  his  canal  at 
Suez,  a  new  and  shorter  route  to  India.  We  think  and 


256  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

read  of  Port  Said,  "the  wickedest  place  in  the  world," 
as  tourists  say,  and  Aden,  the  hottest,  finding  romance 
in  them  because  they  are  at  the  ends  of  this  famous 
artificial  waterway.  The  boast  of  our  part  in  supplying 
the  world  with  a  canal  at  Panama  at  a  cost  of  $400,000,- 
ooo — it  sounded  big  before  the  war  altered  our  attitude 
toward  money.  When  the  Panama  Canal  was  building 
tens  of  thousands  of  our  people  took  the  long  and  costly 
trip  to  the  tropics  to  look  upon  the  work  and  speculate 
upon  the  effect  it  would  have  on  the  trade  routes  of  the 
world. 

But  we  have  at  the  Sault  Ste.  Marie  a  canal  which, 
open  for  but  seven  months  in  the  year,  dwarfs  the  traffic 
of  these  two  great  inter-oceanic  canals.  And  paralleling 
it  the  Canadian  Government  has  constructed  another 
of  almost  equal  proportions.  Though  these  canals  year 
after  year  flows  a  steady  stream  of  grain,  which  during 
the  last  three  years  has  been  the  chief  factor  in  keeping 
the  people  of  Europe  alive.  More  than  65,000,000  tons 
of  shipping  passed  its  locks  in  1917.  About  6,000,000 
tons  passed  the  Panama  locks  the  same  year,  and  12,325,- 
ooo  tons  the  Suez  Canal  during  1916.  War  reticence 
prevented  the  issuance  of  figures  for  the  latter  water- 
way for  1917. 

We  think  of  London,  Liverpool  and  Hamburg- 
prior  to  Germany's  suicidal  war — as  the  great  parts  of 
the  world.  But  in  tonnage  and  number  of  clearances 
Duluth  exceeds  all  but  London.  The  "Pool  of  London," 
with  its  crowded  shipping,  has  long  been  a  theme  for 
artists  and  for  writers,  who  have  never  looked  upon  or 
thought  of  the  spectacle  when  from  a  dozen  to  a  score  of 
great  lake  steamships  are  waiting  or  jockeying  for  place 
at  the  overcrowded  docks  of  Duluth. 

Crowded?     The  Pool  of  London?     Why  the  Great 


MERCHANT  MARINE  257 

Lakes  themselves  are  so  overcrowded  that  years  ago  the 
Great  Lakes  Shipping  Association  took  steps  to  avert  the 
perils  of  collision  by  laying  down  arbitrary  east  and  west 
routes  for  vessels  under  steam. 

The  years  of  the  war  saw  the  shipping  industry  on 
the  Great  Lakes  at  its  apogee.  It  is  true  that  the  fleet 
was  somewhat  reduced  by  the  removal  of  ships  com- 
mandeered for  ocean  use,  while  the  shipyards  were  busy 
almost  exclusively  upon  vessels  of  a  size  suitable  for 
passage  through  the  Canadian  canals  to  tidewater.  But 
the  great,  long,  cigar-shaped  steamers  carrying  13,000 
tons  of  coal  or  ore,  or  450,000  bushels  of  wheat,  were 
pushed  as  never  before.  The  iron  and  steel  mills  of  Illi- 
nois, Ohio  and  Pennsylvania  were  eating  up  the  red  sandy 
ore  of  the  Mesaba  range,  and  converting  it  into  cannon 
for  our  friends — and  later  for  our  own  armies — shells, 
ship-plates  and  structural  steel  of  every  sort.  The  even 
hungrier  people  of  Europe  were  crying  aloud  for  our 
foodstuffs  and  the  great  granary  of  the  Northwest  was 
pouring  its  golden  tribute  into  the  steel  coffers  of  the 
ships  that  carried  it  as  far  east  as  Buffalo — and  would 
have  taken  it  clear  to  Europe  had  the  ship  canal  been 
ready  that  must  surely  come  at  no  distant  date.  A  writer 
in  the  Outlook,  who  made  an  especial  study  of  the  part 
played  by  lake  shipping  in  feeding  Europe  under  the 
Hoover  regime,  sets  forth  these  figures : 

"The  stream  of  ore  and  grain  and  coal  pouring 
through  the  locks  at  the  Soo,  when  composed  into  sea- 
sonal figures,  is  enormous.  Lake  freighters  are  mon- 
sters, some  of  them  carrying  as  much  as  16,000  tons  at 
a  load,  and  they  are  locking  up  and  down  at  few-minute 
intervals  day  and  night  all  season  long,  except  during  the 
thickest  fogs.  Their  combined  tonnage,  with  the  present 
estimated  shortage  of  food,  would  supply  Europe  in  one 


258  THE  STORY   OF   OUR 

season  with  enough  white  bread  to  last  her  for  fifteen 
years !  Ninety  million  tons  in  a  season — the  most  heroic 
figures  dealt  in  by  the  Department  of  Commerce  adding 
machines ! 

"Last  spring,  in  spite  of  the  most  terrific  winter  they 
ever  had  up  there,  the  locks  were  opened  four  days 
earlier  than  in  the  Spring  of  1917.  During  that  April 
four  tons  of  cargo  went  eastward  through  the  Soo.  But 
last  April  somebody  got  behind  and  pushed  hard.  Chan- 
nels were  bored  open,  ships  in  Lake  Superior  harbors 
were  coaled  and  blowing  off  steam,  cargoes  were  waiting 
for  them  in  the  elevators  and  in  the  bins.  As  a  result, 
for  April,  1918,  are  stacked  these  figures: 

"1,474,698  bushels  of  grain. 

"4,045,047  bushels  of  wheat. 

"136,436  tons  of  iron  ore." 

That,  mark  you,  was  the  fruit  merely  of  opening 
navigation  a  few  days  ahead  of  time.  One  can  estimate 
from  it  what  the  lake  fleet  is  capable  of  in  the  busy  sea- 
son of  midsummer. 

Much  of  the  tremendous  freight-moving  capacity  of 
the  lake  shipping  is  due  to  the  marvelous  apparatus  for 
loading  and  discharging  ships — and  the  fact  that  the 
ships  are  designed  with  special  view  to  the  celerity  of 
this  service.  At  Duluth  the  record  for  loading  a  grain 
ship  has  been  435,000  bushels  in  two  hours  and  forty 
minutes.  At  the  other  end  of  the  route  456,000  bushels 
have  been  deftly  withdrawn  from  the  great  steel  box  in 
less  than  fourteen  hours.  At  Lake  Erie  ports  they  ship 
coal  for  the  Northwest  and  huge  machines  pick  up 
gondolas  of  coal,  holding  100  tons  each,  swing  them 
through  the  air  and  dump  their  contents  into  the  hold 
of  the  waiting  vessel.  Getting  it  out  again  is  a  harder 


MERCHANT  MARINE  259 

job,  but  Duluth  has  unloaded  10,074  tons  of  coal  in  less 
than  seven  hours. 

Of  course  the  high  tonnage  of  a  port  like  Duluth,  or 
bf  a  passage  like  the  Lime  Kiln  Channel  below  Detroit, 
[s  due  to  the  fact  that  the  same  boat  makes  many  round 
iirips  in  the  course  of  a  month.  Duluth  has  more  clear- 
ances than  Liverpool,  but  not  by  so  many  different  ves- 
sels. A  I3,ooo-ton  ship  will  pass  the  Lime  Kiln  loaded 
with  grain  for  Buffalo,  and  be  back,  headed  west  with  a 
aew  cargo  of  coal  in  five  days.  Naturally,  in  the  ton- 
page  of  Buffalo  or  Duluth  she  will  count  for  much  more 
jn  the  course  of  a  season  than  a  ship  pulling  forth  from 
Liverpool  for  a  month's  run  to  Asiatic  waters. 

We  find  that  on  the  lakes  expedition  in  loading  and 
unloading  are  qualities  sought  in  marine  architecture 
fctnd  in  the  management  of  ships.  Most  of  the  big  car- 
riers are  "liners"  making  regular  trips  between  docks 
bwned  by  the  same  companies,  and  the  latter  are  equipped 
with  handling  facilities  that  make  the  famous  docks  of 
Hamburg  seem  second  rate  in  comparison.  It  is  esti- 
piated  that  delay  costs  a  loaded  ship  $10  a  minute,  and 
therefore  everything — the  ship  herself,  the  locks  and 
S:anals  through  which  she  passes,  and  the  docks  to  which 
,»he  ties  up  for  cargo — are  designed  to  avert  delay.  The 
Government  is  keenly  alive  to  this  need.  The  new  Liv- 
ngstone  Channel  below  Detroit  was  cut  out  of  the  lime- 
ktone  bed  of  the  river  in  order  that  the  lines  of  vessels 
[hat  every  season  waited  to  get  across  the  neighboring 
]Lime  Kiln  crossing  might  be  diverted.  The  new  i,ooo- 
foot  locks  at  the  Soo  were  not  completed  before  busy 
teasons  saw  as  many  as  forty  ships  waiting  to  get 
through  the  old  locks.  Even  today  it  sometimes  hap- 
pens at  Buffalo,  Cleveland  and  Detroit  that  eager  vessel 
jnen  jockey  and  jostle  in  the  effort  to  get  their  ships  up 


260  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

to  the  overcrowded  docks,  much  as  if  they  were  trying 
to  park  an  automobile  at  the  curb  of  a  crowded  theater 
street. 

The  future  of  lake  shipping  and  shipbuilding? 
There  seems  to  be  no  reason  why  it  should  lag  behind 
the  past.  Europe  will  presently  begin  to  raise  much  of 
its  own  food  again,  and  the  rush  of  the  grain  carriers 
will  be  perhaps  less  furious,  and  the  need  to  extend 
seasons  at  both  ends  beyond  the  danger  point  will  be  past, 
But  always  the  great  Northwest  of  the  United  States  and 
Canada  will  be  the  granary  of  the  crowded  East,  and 
the  European  world.  The  rich  iron  deposits  of  the 
Mesaba  region  seem  inexhaustible.  For  decades,  prob- 
ably centuries,  to  come  they  will  keep  the  furnaces  of 
Illinois,  Pennsylvania  and  Ohio  stocked  with  ore.  For 
these  products  the  lakes  already  afford  the  most  expe- 
ditious and  economical  road  to  market.  And  inevitably, 
as  surely  as  any  obvious  development  of  the  industrial 
field  of  man  can  be  foreseen,  the  ship  canal  from  the 
lakes  to  the  sea  will  be  built.  Already  men  know  that 
it  can  be  done  more  cheaply  than  was  the  Panama  Canal. 
The  nation  has  learned  through  war's  dread  needs  to 
think  in  billions  and  not  in  millions.  No  longer  will  the 
money  needed  to  cut  the  ridge  which  nature  raised  be- 
tween Lake  Erie  and  the  Hudson  be  grudged.  An  im- 
provement which,  costing  less  than  our  unhappy  govern- 
mental experiment  in  aviation,  will  bring  increaesd  pros- 
perity to  millions  of  our  people,  and  open  new  oceans  to 
the  commerce  of  all  peoples  cannot  long  be  deferred. 
And  with  it  concluded  lake  shipyards  and  lake  sailors  will 
assume  first  place  in  the  records  of  the  nation's  merchant 
marine. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  MISSISSIPPI  AND  TRIBUTARY  RIVERS  — THE  CHANGING 
PHASES  OF  THEIR  SHIPPING — RIVER  NAVIGATION  AS  A  NATION- 
BUILDING  FORCE  —  THE  VALUE  OF  SMALL  STREAMS  —  WORK 
OF  THE  OHIO  COMPANY  —  AN  EARLY  PROPELLER  —  THE 
FRENCH  FIRST  ON  THE  MISSISSIPPI  —  THE  SPANIARDS  AT 
NEW  ORLEANS  —  EARLY  METHODS  OF  NAVIGATION  —  THE 
FLATBOAT,  THE  BROADHORN,  AND  THE  KEELBOAT  —  LIFE  OF 
THE  RlVERMEN  —  PlRATES  AND  BUCCANEERS  —  LAFITTE  AND 
THE  BARATARIANS  —  THE  GENESIS  OF  THE  STEAMBOATS  — 
CAPRICIOUS  RIVER  —  FLUSH  TIMES  IN  NEW  ORLEANS  —  RAPID 
MULTIPLICATION  OF  STEAMBOATS  —  RECENT  FIGURES  ON  RIVER 
SHIPPING  —  COMMODORE  WHIPPLE'S  EXPLOIT  —  THE  MEN  WHO 
STEERED  THE  STEAMBOATS  —  THEIR  TECHNICAL  EDUCATION  — 
THE  SHIPS  THEY  STEERED  —  FIRES  AND  EXPLOSIONS — HERO- 
ISM OF  THE  PILOTS  —  THE  RACERS. 

"IT  is  the  ordinary  opinion,  and  one  expressed  too  often 
''  in  publications  which  might  be  expected  to  speak  with 
some  degree  of  accuracy,  that  river  transportation  in  the 
United  States  is  a  dying  industry.  We  read  every  now 
and  then  of  the  disappearance  of  the  magnificent  Missis- 
sippi River  steamers,  and  the  magazines  not  infrequently 
treat  their  readers  to  glowing  stories  of  what  is  called  the 
"flush"  times  on  the  Mississippi,  when  the  gorgeousness 
of  the  passenger  accommodations,  the  lavishness  of  the 
table,  the  prodigality  of  the  gambling,  and  the  mingled 
magnificence  and  outlawry  of  life  on  the  great  packets 
made  up  a  picturesque  and  romantic  phase  of  American 
life.  It  is  true  that  much  of  the  picturesqueness  and  the 
romance  has  departed  long  since.  The  great  river  no 


262  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

longer  bears  on  its  turbid  bosom  many  of  the  towering 
castellated  boats  built  to  run,  as  the  saying  was,  on  a 
heavy  dew,  but  still  carrying  their  tiers  upon  tiers  of 
ivory-white  cabins  high  in  air.  The  time  is  past  when 
the  river  was  the  great  passenger  thoroughfare  from  St. 
Louis  to  New  Orleans.  Some1  few  packets  still  ply  upon 
its  surface,  but  in  the  main  the  passenger  traffic  has  been 
diverted  to  the  railroads  which  closely  parallel  its  chan- 
nel on  either  side.  The  American  travels  much,  but  he 
likes  to  travel  fast,  and  for  passenger  traffic,  except  on 
a  few  routes  where  special  conditions  obtain,  the  steam- 
boat has  long  since  been  outclassed  by  the  railroads. 

Yet  despite  the  disappearance  of  its  spectacular  con- 
ditions the  water  traffic  on  the  rivers  of  the  Mississippi 
Valley  is  greater  now  than  at  any  time  in  its  history.  Its 
methods  only  have  changed.  Instead  of  gorgeous 
packets  crowded  with  a  gay  and  prodigal  throng  of  trav- 
elers for  pleasure,  we  now  find  most  often  one  dingy, 
puffing  steamboat,  probably  with  no  passenger  accommo- 
dations at  all,  but  which  pushes  before  her  from  Pittsburg 
to  New  Orleans  more  than  a  score  of  flatbottomed, 
square-nosed  scows,  aggregating  perhaps  more  than  an 
acre  of  surface,  and  heavy  laden  with  coal.  Such  a  tow—- 
for "tow"  it  is  in  the  river  vernacular,  although  it  is 
pushed — will  transport  more  in  one  trip  than  would  suf- 
fice to  load  six  heavy  freight  trains.  Not  infrequently  the 
barges  or  scows  will  number  more  than  thirty,  carrying 
more  than  1000  tons  each,  or  a  cargo  exceeding  in  value 
$100,000.  During  the  season  when  navigation  is  open  on 
the  Ohio  and  its  tributaries,  this  traffic  is  pursued  without 
interruption.  Through  it  and  through  the  local  business 
on  the  lower  Mississippi,  and  the  streams  which  flow  into 
it,  there  is  built  up  a  tonnage  which  shows  the  freight 
movement,  at  least,  on  the  great  rivers,  to  exceed,  even  in 


MERCHANT  MARINE  263 

these  days  of  railroads,  anything  recorded  in  their  history. 
No  physical  characteristic  of  the  United  States  has 
contributed  so  greatly  to  the  nationalization  of  the  coun- 
try and  its  people,  as  the  topography  of  its  rivers.  From 
the  very  earliest  days  they  have  been  the  pathways  along 
which  proceeded  exploration  and  settlement.  Our  fore- 
fathers, when  they  found  the  narrow  strip  of  land  along 
the  Atlantic  coast  which  they  had  at  first  occupied,  be- 
coming crowded,  according  to  their  ideas  at  the  time,  be- 
gan working  westward,  following  the  river  gaps.  Up  the 
Hudson  and  westward  by  the  Mohawk,  up  the  Susque- 
hanna  and  the  Potomac,  carrying  around  the  falls  that 
impeded  the  course  of  those  streams,  trudging  over  the 
mountains,  and  building  flatboats  at  the  headwaters  of 
the  Ohio,  they  made  their  way  west.  Some  of  the  most 
puny  streams  were  utilized  for  water-carriers,  and  the 
traveler  of  to-day  on  certain  of  the  railroads  through 
western  New  York  and  Pennsylvania,  will  be  amazed  to 
see  the  remnants  of  canals,  painfully  built  in  the  beds  of 
brawling  streams,  that  now  would  hardly  float  an  Indian 
birch-bark  canoe.  In  their  time  these  canals  served  use- 
ful purposes.  The  stream  was  dammed  and  locked  every 
few  hundred  yards,  and  so  converted  into  a  placid  water- 
way with  a  flight  of  mechanical  steps,  by  which  the  boats 
were  let  down  to,  or  raised  up  from  tidewater.  To-day 
nothing  remains  of  most  of  these  works  of  engineering, 
except  masses  of  shattered  masonry.  For  the  railroads, 
using  the  river's  bank,  and  sometimes  even  part  of  the  re- 
taining walls  of  the  canals  for  their  roadbeds,  have 
shrewdly  obtained  and  swiftly  employed  authority  to  de- 
stroy all  the  fittings  of  these  waterways  which  might, 
perhaps,  at  some  time,  offer  to  their  business  a  certain 
rivalry. 

The  corporation  known  as  the  Ohio  Company,  with  a 


264  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

great  purchase  of  land  from  Congress  in  1787,  by  keen 
advertising,  and  the  methods  of  the  modern  real-estate 
boomer,  started  the  tide  of  emigration  and  the  fleet  of 
boats  down  the  Ohio.  The  first  craft  sent  out  by  this 
corporation  was  named,  appropriately  enough,  the  "May- 
flower." She  drifted  from  Pittsburg  to  a  spot  near  the 
mouth  of  the  Muskingum  river.  Soon  the  immigrants 
began  to  follow  by  scores,  and  then  by  thousands.  Mr. 
McMaster  has  collected  some  contemporary  evidence  of 
their  numbers.  One  man  at  Fort  Pitt  saw  fifty  flatboats 
set  forth  between  the  first  of  March  and  the  middle  of 
April,  1787.  Between  October,  1786,  and  May,  1787— 
the  frozen  season  when  boats  were  necessarily  infre- 
quent— the  adjutant  at  Fort  Harmer  counted  one  hundred 
and  seventy-seven  flat-boats,  and  estimated  they  carried 
twenty-seven  hundred  settlers.  A  shabby  and  clumsy  fleet 
it  was,  indeed,  with  only  enough  seamanship  involved  to 
push  off  a  sand-bar,  but  it  was  a  great  factor  in  the  up- 
building of  the  nation.  And  a  curious  fact  is  that  the  voy- 
agers on  one  of  these  river  craft  hit  upon  the  principle  of 
the  screw-propeller,  and  put  it  to  effective  use.  The 
story  is  told  in  the  diary  of  Manasseh  Cutler,  a  member  of 
the  Ohio  Company,  who  writes:  "Assisted  by  a  number 
of  people,  we  went  to  work  and  constructed  a  machine  in 
the  form  of  a  screw,  with  short  blades,  and  placed  it  in  the 
stern  of  the  boat,  which  we  turned  with  a  crank.  It  suc- 
ceeded to  perfection,  and  I  think  it  a  very  useful  dis- 
covery." But  the  discovery  was  forgotten  for  nearly 
three-quarters  of  a  century,  until  John  Ericsson  redis- 
covered and  utilized  it. 

Once  across  the  divide,  the  early  stream  of  immigra- 
tion took  its  way  down  the  Ohio  River  to  the  Mississippi. 
There  it  met  the  outposts  of  French  power,  for  the  French 
burst  open  that  great  river,  following  their  missionaries, 


MERCHANT  MARINE  265 

Marquette  and  Joliet,  down  from  its  headwaters  in  Wis- 
consin, or  pressing  up  from  their  early  settlements  at  New 
Orleans.  Doubtless,  if  it  had  not  been  that  the  Mississippi 
afforded  the  most  practicable,  and  the  most  useful  high- 
way from  north  to  south,  the  young  American  people 
would  have  had  a  French  State  to  the  westward  of  them 
until  they  had  gone  much  further  on  the  path  toward 
national  manhood.  But  the  navigation  of  the  Mississippi 
and  its  tributaries  was  so  rich  a  prize,  that  it  stimulated 
alike  considerations  of  individual  self-interest  and  national 
ambition.  From  the  day  when  the  first  flatboat  made  its 
way  from  the  falls  of  the  Ohio  to  New  Orleans,  it  was 
the  fixed  determination  of  all  people  living  by  the  great 
river,  or  using  it  as  a  highway  for  commerce,  that  from 
its  headwaters  to  its  mouth  it  should  be  a  purely  American 
stream.  It  was  in  this  way  that  the  Mississippi  and  its 
tributaries  proved  to  be,  as  I  have  said,  a  great  influence 
in  developing  the  spirit  of  coherent  nationality  among  the 
people  of  the  young  nation. 

Indeed,  no  national  Government  could  be  of  much 
value  to  the  farmers  and  trappers  of  Kentucky  and  Ten- 
nessee that  did  not  assure  them  the  right  to  navigate 
the  Mississippi  to  its  mouth,  and  find  there  a  place  to 
trans-ship  their  goods  into  ocean-going  vessels.  From  the 
Atlantic  seaboard  they  were  shut  off  by  a  wall,  that  for  all 
purpose  of  export  trade  was  impenetrable.  The  swift 
current  of  the  rivers  beat  back  their  vessels,  the  towering 
ranges  of  the  Alleghanies  mocked  at  their  efforts  at  road 
building.  From  their  hills  flowed  the  water  that  filled  the 
Father  of  Waters  and  his  tributaries.  Nature  had  clearly 
designed  this  for  their  outlet.  As  James  Madison  wrote : 
"The  Mississippi  is  to  them  everything.  It  is  the  Hudson, 
the  Delaware,  the  Potomac,  and  all  the  navigable  waters 
of  the  Atlantic  coast  formed  into  one  stream."  Yet,  when 


266  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

the  first  trader,  in  1786,  drifted  with  his  flatboat  from 
Ohio  down  to  New  Orleans,  thus  entering  the  confines  of 
Spanish  territory,  he  was  seized  and  imprisoned,  his  goods 
were  taken  from  him,  and  at  last  he  was  turned  loose,  pen- 
niless, to  plod  on  foot  the  long  way  back  to  his  home,  tell- 
ing the  story  of  his  hardships  as  he  went  along.  The  name 
of  that  man  was  Thomas  Amis,  and  after  his  case  became 
known  in  the  great  valley,  it  ceased  to  be  a  matter  of 
doubt  that  the  Americans  would  control  the  Mississippi. 
He  was  in  a  sense  the  forerunner  of  Jefferson  and  Jack- 
son, for  after  his  time  no  intelligent  statesman  could  doubt 
that  New  Orleans  must  be  ours,  nor  any  soldier  question 
the  need  for  defending  it  desperately  against  any  foreign 
power.  The  story  of  the  way  in  which  Gen.  James 
Wilkinson,  by  intrigue  and  trickery,  some  years  later 
secured  a  partial  relaxation  of  Spanish  vigilance,  can  not 
be  told  here,  though  his  plot  had  much  to  do  with  open- 
ing the  great  river. 

The  story  of  navigation  on  the  Mississippi  River,  is 
not  without  its  elements  of  romance,  though  it  does  not 
approach  in  world  interest  the  story  of  the  achievements  of 
the  New  England  mariners  on  all  the  oceans  of  the  globe. 
Little  danger  from  tempest  was  encountered  here.  The 
natural  perils  to  navigation  were  but  an  ignoble  and  un- 
romantic  kind — the  shifting  sand-bar  and  the  treacherous 
snag.  Yet,  in  the  early  days,  when  the  flatboats  were 
built  at  Cincinnati  or  Pittsburg,  with  high  parapets  of 
logs  or  heavy  timber  about  their  sides,  and  manned  not 
only  with  men  to  work  the  sweeps  and  hold  the  steering 
oar,  but  with  riflemen,  alert  of  eye,  and  unerring  of  aim, 
to  watch  for  the  lurking  savage  on  the  banks,  there  was 
peril  in  the  voyage  that  might  even  affect  the  stout  nerves 
of  the  hardy  navigator  from  New  Bedford  or  Nantucket. 
For  many  long  years  in  the  early  days  of  our  country's 


MERCHANT   MARINE  267. 

history,  the  savages  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  were  always 
hostile,  continually  enraged.  The  French  and  the  Eng- 
lish, bent  upon  stirring  up  antagonism  to  the  growing 
young  nation,  had  their  agents  persistently  at  work  awak- 
ening Indian  hostility,  and,  indeed,  it  is  probable  that  had 
this  not  been  the  case,  the  rough  and  lawless  character  of 
the  American  pioneers,  and  their  entire  indifference  to  the 
rights  of  the  Indians,  whom  they  were  bent  on  displacing, 
would  have  furnished  sufficient  cause  for  conflict. 

First  of  the  craft  to  follow  the  Indian  canoes  and  the 
bateaux  of  the  French  missionaries  down  the  great  rivers, 
was  the  flatboat — a  homely  and  ungraceful  vessel,  but  yet 
one  to  which  the  people  of  the  United  States  owe,  perhaps, 
more  of  real  service  in  the  direction  of  building  up  a  great 
nation  than  they  do  to  Dewey's  "Olympia,"  or  Schley's 
"Brooklyn."  A  typical  flatboat  of  the  early  days  of  river 
navigation  was  about  fifty-five  feet  long  by  sixteen  broad. 
It  was  without  a  keel,  as  its  name  would  indicate,  and 
drew  about  three  feet  of  water.  Amidships  was  built  a 
rough  deck-house  or  cabin,  from  the  roof  of  which  ex- 
tended on  either  side,  two  long  oars,  used  for  directing 
the  course  of  the  craft  rather  than  for  propulsion,  since 
her  way  was  ever  downward  with  the  current,  and  de- 
pendent upon  it.  These  great  oars  seemed  to  the  fancy 
of  the  early  flatboat  men,  to  resemble  horns,  hence  the 
name  "broadhorns,"  sometimes  applied  to  the  boats.  Such 
a  boat  the  settler  would  fill  with  household  goods  and 
farm  stock,  and  commit  himself  to  the  current  at  Pitts- 
burg.  From  the  roof  of  the  cabin  that  housed  his  family, 
cocks  crew  and  hens  cackled,  while  the  stolid  eyes  of  cat- 
tle peered  over  the  high  parapet  of  logs  built  about  the 
edge  for  protection  against  the  arrow  or  bullet  of  the  wan- 
dering redskin.  Sometimes  several  families  would  com- 
bine to  build  one  ark.  Drifting  slowly  down  the  river — - 


the  voyage  from  Pittsburg  to  the  falls  of  the  Ohio,  where 
Louisville  now  stands,  requiring  with  the  best  luck,  a 
week  or  ten  days — the  shore  on  either  hand  would  be 
closely  scanned  for  signs  of  unusual  fertility,  or  for  the 
opening  of  some  small  stream  suggesting  a  good  place  to 
"settle."  When  a  spot  was  picked  out  the  boat  would  be 
run  aground,  the  boards  of  the  cabin  erected  skilfully  into 
a  hut,  and  a  new  outpost  of  civilization  would  be  estab- 
lished. As  these  settlements  multiplied,  and  the  course 
of  emigration  to  the  west  and  southwest  increased,  river 
life  became  full  of  variety  and  gaiety.  In  some  years  more 
than  a  thousand  boats  were  counted  passing  Marietta. 
Several  boats  would  lash  together  and  make  the  voyage  to 
New  Orleans,  which  sometimes  occupied  months,  in  com- 
pany. There  would  be  frolics  and  dances,  the  notes  of  the 
violin — an  almost  universal  instrument  among  the  flat- 
boat  men — sounded  across  the  waters  by  night  to  the 
lonely  cabins  on  the  shores,  and  the  settlers  not  infre- 
qently  would  put  off  in  their  skiffs  to  meet  the  unknown 
voyagers,  ask  for  the  news  from  the  east,  and  share  in 
their  revels.  Floating  shops  were  established  on  the 
Ohio  and  its  tributaries — flatboats,  with  great  cabins 
fitted  with  shelves  and  stocked  with  cloth,  ammunition, 
tools,  agricultural  implements,  and  the  ever-present 
whisky,  which  formed  a  principal  staple  of  trade  along  the 
rivers.  Approaching  a  clump  of  houses  on  the  bank,  the 
amphibious  shopkeeper  would  blow  lustily  upon  a  horn, 
and  thereupon  all  the  inhabitants  would  flock  down  to  the 
banks  to  bargain  for  the  goods  that  attracted  them.  As 
the  population  increased  the  floating  saloon  and  the  float- 
ing gambling  house  were  added  to  the  civilized  advan- 
tages the  river  bore  on  its  bosom.  Trade  was  long  a  mere 
matter  of  barter,  for  currency  was  seldom  seen  in  these 
outlying  settlements.  Skins  and  agricultural  products 


were  all  the  purchasers  had  to  give,  and  the  merchant 
starting  from  Pittsburg  with  a  cargo  of  manufactured 
goods,  would  arrive  at  New  Orleans,  perhaps  three 
months  later,  with  a  cabin  filled  with  furs  and  a  deck  piled 
high  with  the  products  of  the  farm.  Here  he  would  dis- 
pose of  his  cargo,  perhaps  for  shipment  to  Europe,  sell 
his  flatboat  for  the  lumber  in  it,  and  begin  his  painful  way 
back  again  to  the  head  of  navigation. 

The  flatboat  never  attempted  to  return  against  the 
stream.  For  this  purpose  keel-boats  or  barges  were  used, 
great  hulks  about  the  size  of  a  small  schooner,  and  requir- 
ing twenty-five  men  at  the  poles  to  push  one  painfully  up 
stream.  Three  methods  of  propulsion  were  employed. 
The  "shoulder  pole,"  which  rested  on  the  bottom,  and 
which  the  boatman  pushed,  walking  from  bow  to  stern  as 
he  did  so ;  tow-lines,  called  cordelles,  and  finally  the  boat 
was  drawn  along  by  pulling  on  overhanging  branches. 
The  last  method  was  called  "bushwhacking."  These  be- 
came in  time  the  regular  packets  of  the  rivers,  since  they 
were  not  broken  up  at  the  end  of  the  voyage  and  required 
trained  crews  for  their  navigation.  The  bargemen  were 
at  once  the  envy  and  terror  of  the  simple  folk  along 
the  shores.  A  wild,  turbulent  class,  ready  to  fight  and  to 
dance,  equally  enraptured  with  the  rough  scraping  of  a 
fiddle  by  one  of  their  number,  or  the  sound  of  the  war- 
whoop,  which  promised  the  only  less  joyous  diversion  of  a 
fight,  they  aroused  all  the  inborn  vagrant  tendencies  of 
the  riverside  boys,  and  to  run  away  with  a  flatboat  be- 
came, for  the  Ohio  or  Indiana  lad,  as  much  of  an  ambi- 
tion as  to  run  away  to  sea  was  for  the  boy  of  New  Eng- 
land. It  will  be  remembered  that  Abraham  Lincoln  for 
a  time  followed  the  calling  of  a  flatboatman,  and  made  a 
voyage  to  New  Orleans,  on  which  he  first  saw  slaves, 
and  later  invented  a  device  for  lifting  flatboats  over 


2;o  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

sand-bars,  the  model  for  which  is  still  preserved  at  Wash- 
ington, though  the  industry  it  was  designed  to  aid  is 
dead.  Pigs,  flour,  and  bacon,  planks  and  shingles, 
ploughs,  hoes,  and  spades,  cider  and  whisky,  were  among 
the  simple  articles  dealt  in  by  the  owners  of  the  barges. 
Their  biggest  market  was  New  Orleans,  and  thither  most 
of  their  food  staples  were  carried,  but  for  agricultural  im- 
plements and  whisky  there  was  a  ready  sale  all  along  the 
route.  Tying  up  to  trade,  or  to  avoid  the  danger  of 
night  navigation,  the  boatmen  became  the  heroes  of  the 
neighborhood.  Often  they  invited  all  hands  down  to  their 
boat  for  a  dance,  and  by  flaring  torches  to  the  notes  of  ac- 
cordion and  fiddle,  the  evening  would  pass  in  rude  and 
harmless  jollity,  unless  too  many  tin  cups  or  gourds  of 
fiery  liquor  excited  the  always  ready  pugnacity  of  the 
men.  They  were  ready  to  brag  of  their  valor,  and  to  put 
their  boasts  to  the  test.  They  were  "half  horse,  half  alliga- 
tor," according  to  their  own  favorite  expression,  equally 
prepared  with  knife  or  pistol,  fist,  or  the  trained  thumb 
that  gouged  out  an  antagonist's  eye,  unless  he  speedily 
called  for  mercy.  "Pm  a  Salt  River  roarer !"  bawled  one 
in  the  presence  of  a  foreign  diarist.  "I  can  outrun,  out- 
jump,  throw  down,  drag  out  and  lick  any  man  on  the 
river!  I  love  wimmen,  and  I'm  chock  full  of  fight!"  In 
every  crew  the  "best"  man  was  entitled  to  wear  a  feather 
or  other  badge,  and  the  word  "best"  had  no  reference  to 
moral  worth,  but  merely  expressed  his  demonstrated 
ability  to  whip  any  of  his  shipmates.  They  had  their 
songs,  too,  usually  sentimental,  as  the  songs  of  rough 
men  ,are,  that  they  bawled  out  as  they  toiled  at  the  sweeps 
or  the  pushpoles.  Some  have  been  preserved  in  history : 

"It's  oh !  As  I  was  walking  out, 
One  morning  in  July, 


MERCHANT   MARINE 


271 


272  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

I  met  a  maid  who  axed  my  trade. 
'A  flatboatman,'  says  I. 

"And  it's  oh!  She  was  so  neat  a  maid 
That  her  stockings  and  her  shoes 
She  toted  in  her  lily-white  hands, 
For  to  keep  them  from  the  dews." 

Just  below  the  mouth  of  the  Wabash  on  the  Ohio  was 
the  site  of  Shawneetown,  which  marked  the  line  of  divi- 
sion between  the  Ohio  and  the  Mississippi  trade.  Here 
goods  and  passengers  were  debarked  for  Illinois,  and  here 
the  Ohio  boatmen  stopped  before  beginning  their  return 
trip.  Because  of  the  revels  of  the  boatmen,  who  were 
paid  off  there,  the  place  acquired  a  reputation  akin  to 
that  which  Port  Said,  at  the  northern  entrance  to  the  Suez 
Canal,  now  holds.  It  held  a  high  place  in  river  song  and 
story. 

"Some  row  up,  but  we  row  down, 
All  the  way  to  Shawneetown. 
Pull  away,  pull  away," 

was  a  favorite  chorus. 

Natchez,  Tennessee,  held  a  like  unsavory  reputation 
among  the  Mississippi  River  boatmen,  for  there  was  the 
great  market  in  which  were  exchanged  northern  products 
for  the  cotton,  yams,  and  sugar  of  the  rich  lands  of  the 
South. 

For  food  on  the  long  voyage,  the  boatmen  relied 
mostly  on  their  rifles,  but  somewhat  on  the  fish  that  might 
be  brought  up  from  the  depths  of  the  turbid  stream,  and 
the  poultry  and  mutton  which  they  could  secure  from 
the  settlers  by  barter,  or  not  infrequently,  by  theft.  Wild 
geese  were  occasionally  shot  from  the  decks,  while  a 
few  hours'  hunt  on  shore  would  almost  certainly  bring  re- 
ward in  the  shape  of  wild  turkey  or  deer.  A  somewhat 


MERCHANT  MARINE  273 

archaic  story  among  river  boatmen  tells  of  the  way  in 
which  "Mike  Fink/'  a  famous  character  among  them, 
secured  a  supply  of  mutton.  Seeing  a  flock  of  sheep  graz- 
ing near  the  shore,  he  ran  his  boat  near  them,  and  rubbed 
the  noses  of  several  with  Scotch  snuff.  When  the  poor 
brutes  began  to  caper  and  sneeze  in  dire  discomfort,  the 
owner  arrived  on  the  scene,  and  asked  anxiously  what 
could  ail  them.  The  bargeman,  as  a  traveled  person,  was 
guide,  philosopher,  and  friend  to  all  along  the  river,  and 
so,  when  informed  that  his  sheep  were  suffering  from 
black  murrain,  and  that  all  would  be  infected  unless  those 
already  afflicted  were  killed,  the  farmer  unquestioningly 
shot  those  that  showed  the  strange  symptoms,  and  threw 
the  bodies  into  the  river,  whence  they  were  presently  col- 
lected by  the  astute  "Mike,"  and  turned  into  fair  mutton 
for  himself  and  passengers.  Such  exploits  as  these  added 
mightily  to  the  repute  of  the  rivermen  for  shrewdness, 
and  the  farmer  who  suffered  received  scant  sympathy 
from  his  neighbors. 

But  the  boatmen  themselves  had  dangers  to  meet,  and 
robbers  to  evade  or  to  outwit.  At  any  time  the  lurking 
Indian  on  the  banks  might  send  a  death-dealing  arrow  or 
bullet  from  some  thicket,  for  pure  love  of  slaughter.  For 
a  time  it  was  a  favorite  ruse  of  hostiles,  who  had  secured 
a  white  captive,  to  send  him  alone  to  the  river's  edge, 
under  threat  of  torture,  there  to  plead  with  outstretched 
hands  for  aid  from  the  passing  raft.  But  woe  to  the 
mariner  who  was  moved  by  the  appeal,  for  back  of  the 
unfortunate,  hidden  in  the  bushes,  lay  ambushed  savages, 
ready  to  leap  upon  any  who  came  ashore  on  the  errand  of 
mercy,  and  in  the  end  neither  victim  nor  decoy  escaped 
the  fullest  infliction  of  redskin  barbarity.  There  were 
white  outlaws  along  the  rivers,  too ;  land  pirates  ready  to 
rob  and  murder  when  opportunity  offered,  and  as  the 


274  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

Spanish  territory  about  New  Orleans  was  entered,  the 
dangers  multiplied.  The  advertisement  of  a  line  of 
packets  sets  forth: 

"No  danger  need  be  apprehended  from  the  enemy,  as 
every  person  whatever  will  be  under  cover,  made  proof 
against  rifle  or  musket  balls,  and  convenient  portholes  for 
firing  out  of.  Each  of  the  boats  are  armed  with  six  pieces, 
carrying  a  pound  ball,  also  a  number  of  muskets,  and 
amply  supplied  with  ammunition,  strongly  manned  with 
choice  hands,  and  masters  of  approved  knowledge." 

The  English  of  the  advertisement  is  not  of  the  most 
luminous  character,  yet  it  suffices  to  tell  clearly  enough  to 
any  one  of  imagination,  the  story  of  some  of  the  dangers 
that  beset  those  who  drifted  from  Ohio  to  New  Orleans. 

The  lower  reaches  of  the  Mississippi  River  bore  among 
rivermen,  during  the  early  days  of  the  century,  very  much 
such  a  reputation  as  the  Spanish  Main  bore  among  the 
peaceful  mariners  of  the  Atlantic  trade.  They  were  the 
haunts  of  pirates  and  buccaneers,  mostly  ordinary  cheap 
freebooters,  operating  from  the  shore  with  a  few  skiffs, 
or  a  lugger,  perhaps,  who  would  dash  out  upon  a  passing 
vessel,  loot  it,  and  turn  it  adrift.  But  one  gang  of  these 
river  pirates  so  grew  in  power  and  audacity,  and  its 
leaders  so  ramified  their  associations  and  their  business 
relations,  as  for  a  time  to  become  a  really  influential  fac- 
tor in  the  government  of  New  Orleans,  while  for  a  term 
of  years  they  even  put  the  authority  of  the  United  States 
at  nought.  The  story  of  the  brothers  Lafitte  and  their 
nest  of  criminals  at  Barataria,  is  one  of  the  most  pic- 
turesque in  American  annals.  On  a  group  of  those  small 
islands  crowned  with  live-oaks  and  with  fronded  palms, 
in  that  strange  waterlogged  country  to  the  southwest  of 
the  Crescent  City,  where  the  sea,  the  bayou,  and  the 
marsh  fade  one  into  the  other  until  the  line  of  demarkation 


MERCHANT   MARINE  275 

can  scarcely  be  traced,  the  Lafittes  established  their  col- 
ony. There  they  built  cabins  and  storehouses,  threw  up- 
earth works,  and  armed  them  with  stolen  cannon.  In  time 
the  plunder  of  scores  of  vessels  filled  the  warehouses  with 
the  goods  of  all  nations,  and  as  the  wealth  of  the  colony 
grew  its  numbers  increased.  To  it  were  attracted  the  ad- 
venturous spirits  of  the  creole  city.  Men  of  Spanish  and 
of  French  descent,  negroes,  and  quadroons,  West  Indi- 
ans from  all  the  islands  scattered  between  North  and 
South  America,  birds  of  prey,  and  fugitives  from  justice 
of  all  sorts  and  kinds,  made  that  a  place  of  refuge.  They 
brought  their  women  and  children,  and  their  slaves,  and 
the  place  became  a  small  principality,  knowing  no  law 
save  Lafitte's  will.  With  a  fleet  of  small  schooners  the 
pirates  would  sally  out  into  the  Gulf  and  plunder  vessels 
of  whatever  sort  they  might  encounter.  The  road  to  their 
hiding-place  was  difficult  to  follow,  either  in  boats  or 
afoot,  for  the  tortuous  bayous  that  led  to  it  were  inter- 
twined in  an  almost  inextricable  maze,  through  which,  in- 
deed, the  trained  pilots  of  the  colony  picked  their  way 
with  ease,  but  along  which  no  untrained  helmsman  could 
follow  them.  If  attack  were  made  by  land,  the  marching 
force  was  confronted  by  impassable  rivers  and  swamps ; 
if  by  boats,  the  invaders  pressing  up  a  channel  which 
seemed 'to  promise  success,  would  find  themselves  sud- 
denly in  a  blind  alley,  with  nothing  to  do  save  to  retrace 
their  course.  Meanwhile,  for  the  greater  convenience  of 
the  pirates,  a  system  of  lagoons,  well  known  to  them,  and 
easily  navigated  in  luggers,  led  to  the  very  back  door  of 
New  Orleans,  the  market  for  their  plunder.  Of  the 
brothers  Lafitte,  one  held  state  in  the  city  as  a  successful 
merchant,  a  man  not  without  influence  with  the  city  gov- 
ernment, of  high  standing  in  the  business  community,  and 
in  thoroughly  good  repute.  Yet  he  was,  in  fact,  the  agent 


276  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

for  the  pirate  colony,  and  the  goods  he  dealt  in  were 
those  which  the  picturesque  ruffians  of  Barataria  had 
stolen  from  the  vessels  about  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi 
River.  The  situation  persisted  for  nearly  half  a  score 
of  years.  If  there  were  merchants,  importers  and  ship- 
owners in  New  Orleans  who  suffered  by  it,  there  were 
others  who  profited  by  it,  and  it  has  usually  been  the  case 
that  a  crime  or  an  injustice  by  which  any  considerable 
number  of  people  profit,  becomes  a  sort  of  vested  right, 
hard  to  disturb.  And,  indeed,  the  Baratarians  were  not 
without  a  certain  rude  sense  of  patriotism  and  loyalty  to 
the  United  States,  whose  laws  they  persistently  violated. 
For  when  the  second  war  with  Great  Britain  was  de- 
clared and  Packenham  was  dispatched  to  take  New  Or- 
leans, the  commander  of  the  British  fleet  made  overtures 
to  Lafitte  and  his  men,  promising  them  a  liberal  subsidy 
and  full  pardon  for  all  past  offenses,  if  they  would  but  act 
as  his  allies  and  guide  the  British  invaders  to  the  most 
vulnerable  point  in  the  defenses  of  the  Crescent  City.  The 
offer  was  refused,  and  instead,  the  chief  men  of  the  pirate 
colony  went  straightway  to  New  Orleans  to  put  Jackson 
on  his  guard,  and  when  the  opposing  forces  met  on  the 
plains  of  Chalmette,  the  very  center  of  the  American  line 
was  held  by  Dominique  Yon,  with  a  band  of  his  swarthy 
Baratarians,  with  howitzers  which  they  themselves  had 
dragged  from  their  pirate  stronghold  to  train  upon  the 
British.  Many  of  us,  however  law-abiding,  will  feel  a 
certain  sense  that  the  romance  of  history  would  have  been 
better  served,  if  after  this  act  of  patriotism,  the  pirates 
had  been  at  least  peacefully  dispersed.  But  they  were 
wedded  to  their  predatory  life,  returned  with  renewed  zeal 
to  their  piracies,  and  were  finally  destroyed  by  the  State 
forces  and  a  United  States  naval  expedition,  which  burned 
their  settlement,  freed  their  slaves,  razed  their  fortifica- 


MERCHANT   MARINE  277 

tions,  confiscated  their  cannon,  killed  many  of  their  people, 
and  dispersed  the  rest  among  the  swamps  and  forests  of 
southern  Louisiana. 

In  1809  a  New  York  man,  by  name  Nicholas  J.  Roose- 
velt, set  out  from  Pittsburg  in  a  flatboat  of  the  usual  type, 
to  make  the  voyage  to  New  Orleans.  He  carried  no  cargo 
of  goods  for  sale,  nor  did  he  convey  any  band  of  intended 
settlers,  yet  his  journey  was  only  second  in  importance  to 
the  ill-fated  one,  in  which  the  luckless  Amis  proved  that 
New  Orleans  must  be  United  States  territory,  or  the 
wealth  of  the  great  interior  plateau  would  be  effectively 
bottled  up.  For  Roosevelt  was  the  partner  of  Fulton 
and  Livingston  in  their  new  steamboat  enterprise,  having 
himself  suggested  the  vertical  paddle-wheel,  which  for 
more  than  a  half  a  century  was  the  favorite  means  of  util- 
izing steam  power  for  the  propulsion  of  boats.  He  was 
firm  in  the  belief  that  the  greatest  future  for  the  steamboat 
was  on  the  great  rivers  that  tied  together  the  rapidly 
growing  commonwealths  of  the  middle  west,  and  he  un- 
dertook this  voyage  for  the  purpose  of  studying  the  chan- 
nel and  the  current  of  the  rivers,  with  the  view  to  putting 
a  steamer  on  them.  Wise  men  assured  him  that  on  the 
upper  river  his  scheme  was  destined  to  failure.  Could  a 
boat  laden  with  a  heavy  engine  be  made  of  so  light  a 
draught  as  to  pass  over  the  shallows  of  the  Ohio  ?  Could 
it  run  the  falls  at  Louisville,  or  be  dragged  around  them 
as  the  flatboats  often  were?  Clearly  not.  The  only 
really  serviceable  type  of  river  craft  was  the  flatboat,  for  it 
would  go  where  there  was  water  enough  for  a  muskrat  to 
swim  in,  would  glide  unscathed  over  the  concealed  snag 
or,  thrusting  its  corner  into  the  soft  mud  of  some  pro- 
truding bank,  swing  around  and  go  on  as  well  stern  first 
as  before.  The  flatboat  was  the  sum  of  human  ingenuity 
applied  to  river  navigation.  Even  barges  were  proving 


278  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

failures  and  passing  into  disuse,  as  the  cost  of  poling  them 
upstream  was  greater  than  any  profit  to  be  reaped  from 
the  voyage.  Could  a  boat  laden  with  thousands  of 
pounds  of  machinery  make  her  way  northward  against 
that  swift  current?  And  if  not,  could  steamboat  men  be 
continually  taking  expensive  engines  down  to  New  Or- 
leans and  abandoning  them  there,  as  the  old-time  river 
men  did  their  rafts  and  scows  ?  Clearly  not.  So  Roose- 
velt's appearance  on  the  river  did  not  in  any  way  disquiet 
the  flatboatmen,  though  it  portended  their  disappearance 
as  a  class.  Roosevelt,  however,  was  in  no  wise  discour- 
aged. Week  after  week  he  drifted  along  the  Ohio  and 
Mississippi,  taking  detailed  soundings,  studying  the  course 
of  the  current,  noting  the  supply  of  fuel  along  the  banks, 
observing  the  course  of  the  rafts  and  flat-boats  as  they 
drifted  along  at  the  mercy  of  the  tide.  Nothing  escaped 
his  attention,  and  yet  it  may  well  be  doubted  whether  the 
mass  of  data  he  collected  was  in  fact  of  any  practical 
value,  for  the  great  river  is  the  least  understandable  of 
streams.  Its  channel  is  as  shifting  as  the  mists  above 
Niagara.  Where  yesterday  the  biggest  boat  on  the  river, 
deep  laden  with  cotton,  might  pass  with  safety,  there  may 
be  to-day  a  sand-bar  scarcely  hidden  beneath  the  tide.  Its 
banks  change  over  night  in  form  and  in  appearance.  In 
time  of  flood  it  cuts  new  channels  for  itself,  leaving  in  a 
few  days  river  towns  far  in  the  interior,  and  suddenly 
giving  a  water  frontage  to  some  plantation  whose  owner 
had  for  years  mourned  over  his  distance  from  the  river 
bank.  Capricious  and  irresistible,  working  insidiously 
night  and  day,  seldom  showing  the  progress  of  its  en- 
deavors until  some  huge  slice  of  land,  acres  in  extent, 
crurribles  into  the  flood,  or  some  gully  or  cut-off  all  at 
once  appears  as  the  main  channel,  the  Mississippi,  even 
now  when  the  Government  is  at  all  times  on  the  alert  to 


MERCHANT   MARINE  279 

hold  it  in  bounds,  is  not  to  be  lightly  learned  nor  long 
trusted.  In  Roosevelt's  time,  before  the  days  of  the  river 
commission,  it  must  have  been  still  more  difficult  to  com- 
prehend. Nevertheless,  the  information  he  collected,  sat- 
isfied him  that  the  stream  was  navigable  for  steamers,  and 
his  report  determined  his  partners  to  build  the  pioneer 
craft  at  Pittsburg.  She  was  completed,  "built  after  the 
fashion  of  a  ship  with  portholes  in  her  side,"  says  a 
writer  of  the  time,  dubbed  the  "Orleans,"  and  in  1812 
reached  the  city  on  the  sodden  praires  near  the  mouth  of 
the  Mississippi,  whose  name  we  now  take  as  a  synonym 
for  quaintness,  but  which  at  that  time  had  seemingly  the 
best  chance  to  become  a  rival  of  London  and  Liverpool, 
of  any  American  town.  For  just  then  the  great  possibil- 
ities of  the  river  highway  were  becoming  apparent.  The 
valley  was  filling  up  with  farmers,  and  their  produce 
sought  the  shortest  way  to  tide-water.  The  streets  of  the 
city  were  crowded  with  flatboatmen,  from  Indiana,  Ohio, 
and  Kentucky,  and  with  sailors  speaking  strange  tongues, 
and  gathered  from  all  the  ports  of  the  world.  At  the  broad 
levee  floated  the  ships  of  all  nations.  All  manual  work 
was  done  by  the  negro  slaves,  and  already  the  planters 
were  beginning  to  show  signs  of  that  prodigal  prosperity, 
which,  in  the  flush  times,  made  New  Orleans  the  gayest 
city  in  the  United  States.  In  1813  Jackson  put  the  final 
seal  on  the  title-deeds  to  New  Orleans,  and  made  the 
Mississippi  forever  an  American  river  by  defeating  the 
British  just  outside  the  city's  walls,  and  then  river  com- 
merce grew  apace.  In  1817  fifteen  hundred  flatboats  and 
five  hundred  barges  tied  up  to  the  levee.  By  that  time 
the  steamboat  had  proved  her  case,  for  the  "New  Orleans" 
had  run  for  years  between  Natchez  and  the  Louisiana  city, 
charging  a  fare  of  eighteen  dollars  for  the  down,  and 
twenty-five  dollars  for  the  up  trip,  and  earning  for  her 


280  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

owners  twenty  thousand  dollars  profits  in  one  year.  She 
was  snagged  and  lost  in  1814,  but  by  that  time  others 
were  in  the  field,  first  of  all  the  "Comet/'a  stern-wheeler  of 
twenty-five  tons,  built  at  Pittsburg,  and  entering  the  New 
Orleans-Natchez  trade  in  1814.  The  "Vesuvius,"  and 
the  "^Etna" — volcanic  names  which  suggested  the  ex- 
plosive end  of  too  many  of  the  early  boats — were  next  in 
the  field,  and  the  latter  won  fame  by  being  the  first  boat 
to  make  the  up  trip  from  New  Orleans  to  Louisville.  An- 
other steamboat,  the  "Enterprise,"  carried  a  cargo  of 
powder  and  ball  from  Pittsburg  to  General  Jackson  at 
New  Orleans,  and  after  some  service  on  southern  waters, 
made  the  return  trip  to  Louisville  in  twenty-five  days. 
This  was  a  great  achievement,  and  hailed  by  the  people 
of  the  Kentucky  town  as  the  certain  forerunner  of  com- 
mercial greatness,  for  at  one  time  there  were  tied  to  the 
bank  the  "Enterprise"  from  New  Orleans,  the  "Despatch" 
from  Pittsburg,  and  the  "Kentucky  Elizabeth"  from  the 
upper  Kentucky  River.  Never  had  the  settlement  seemed 
to  be  so  thoroughly  in  the  heart  of  the  continent.  There- 
after river  steamboating  grew  so  fast  that  by  1819  sixty- 
three  steamers,  of  varying  tonnage  from  twenty  to  three 
hundred  tons,  were  plying  on  the  western  rivers.  Foar 
had  been  built  at  New  Orleans,  one  each  at  Philadelphia, 
New  York,  and  Providence,  and  fifty-six  on  the  Ohio.  The 
upper  reaches  of  the  Mississippi  still  lagged  in  the  race, 
for  most  of  the  boats  turned  off  up  the  Ohio  River,  into 
the  more  populous  territory  toward  the  east.  It  was  not 
until  August,  1817,  that  the  "General  Pike,"  the  first 
steamer  ever  to  ascend  the  Mississippi  River  above  the 
mouth  of  the  Ohio,  reached  St.  Louis.  No  pictures,  and 
but  scant  descriptons  of  this  pioneer  craft,  are  obtainable 
at  the  present  time.  From  old  letters  it  is  learned  that  she 
was  built  on  the  model  of  a  barge,  with  her  cabin  situated 


MERCHANT   MARINE  281 

f>n  the  lower  deck,  so  that  its  top  scarcely  showed  above 
the  bulwarks.  She  had  a  low-pressure  engine,  which  at 
times  proved  inadequate  to  stem  the  current,  and  in  such 
a  crisis  the  crew  got  out  their  shoulder  poles  and  pushed 
her  painfully  up  stream,  as  had  been  the  practice  so  many 
years  with  the  barges.  At  night  she  tied  up  to  the  bank. 
Only  one  other  steamer  reached  St.  Louis  in  the  same 
twelve  months.  By  way  of  contrast  to  this  picture  of 
the  early  beginnings  of  river  navigation  on  the  upper  Mis- 
sissippi, we  may  set  over  some  facts  drawn  from  recent 
official  publications  concerning  the  volume  of  river  traffic, 
of  which  St.  Louis  is  now  the  admitted  center.  In  1890 
11,000,000  passengers  were  carried  in  steamboats  on 
rivers  of  the  Mississippi  system.  The  Ohio  and  its  tribu- 
taries, according  to  the  census  of  that  year,  carried  over 
15,000,000  tons  of  freight  annually,  mainly  coal,  grain, 
lumber,  iron,  and  steel.  The  Mississippi  carries  about  the 
same  amount  of  freight,  though  on  its  turbid  tide,  cotton 
and  sugar,  in  no  small  degree,  take  the  place  of  grain  and 
the  products  of  the  furnaces  and  mills. 

But  it  was  a  long  time  before  steam  navigation  ap- 
proached anything  like  these  figures,  and  indeed,  many 
years  passed  before  the  flatboat  and  the  barge  saw  their 
doom,  and  disappeared.  In  1821,  ten  years  after  the  first 
steamboat  arrived  at  New  Orleans,  there  was  still  re- 
corded in  the  annals  of  the  town,  the  arrival  of  four  hun- 
dred and  forty-one  flatboats,  and  one  hundred  and  sev- 
enty-four barges.  But  two  hundred  and  eighty-seven 
steamboats  also  tied  up  to  the  levee  that  year,  and  the  end 
Q£  the  flatboat  days  was  in  sight.  Ninety-five  of  the 
new  type  of  vessels  were  in  service  on  the  Mississippi  and 
its  tributaries,  and  five  were  at  Mobile  making  short 
voyages  on  the  Mississippi  Sound  and  out  into  the  Gulf. 
They  were  but  poor  types  of  vessels  at  best.  At  first  the 


282  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

shortest  voyage  up  the  river  from  New  Orleans  to  Ship- 
pingport — then  a  famous  landing,  now  vanished  from  the 
map — was  twenty-two  days,  and  it  took  ten  days  to  come 
down.  Within  six  years  the  models  of  the  boats  and  the 
power  of  the  engines  had  been  so  greatly  improved  that 
the  up  trip  was  made  in  twelve  days,  and  the  down  in 
six.  Even  the  towns  on  the  smaller  streams  tributary  to 
the  great  river,  had  their  own  fleets.  Sixteen  vessels 
plied  between  Nashville  and  New  Orleans.  The  Red 
River,  and  even  the  Missouri,  began  to  echo  to  the  puffing 
of  the  exhaust  and  the  shriek  of  the  steam-whistle.  In- 
deed, it  was  not  very  long  before  the  Missouri  River  be- 
came as  important  a  pathway  for  the  troops  of  emigrants 
making  for  the  great  western  plains  and  in  time  for  the 
gold  fields  of  California,  as  the  Ohio  had  been  in  the  open- 
ing days  of  the  century  for  the  pioneers  bent  upon  open- 
ing up  the  Mississippi  Valley.  The  story  of  the  Missouri 
River  voyage,  the  landing  place  at  Westport,  now  trans- 
formed into  the  great  bustling  city  of  Kansas  City,  and  all 
the  attendant  incidents  which  led  up  to  the  contest  in  Kan- 
sas and  Nebraska,  forms  one  of  the  most  interesting,  and 
not  the  least  important  chapters  in  the  history  of  our 
national  development. 

The  decade  during  which  the  steamboats  and  the 
flatboats  still  struggled  for  the  mastery,  was  the  most 
picturesque  period  of  Mississippi  River  life.  Then  the 
river  towns  throve  most,  and  waxed  turbulent,  noisy,  and 
tig,  according  to  the  standards  of  the  times.  Places  which 
now  are  mere  names  on  the  map,  or  have  even  disappeared 
from  the  map  altogether,  were  great  trans-shipping  points 
for  goods  on  the  way  to  the  sea.  New  Madrid,  for  ex- 
ample, which  nowadays  we  remember  chiefly  as  being  one 
of  the  stubborn  obstacles  in  the  way  of  the  Union  opening 
of  the  river  in  the  dark  days  of  the  Civil  War,  was  in  1826 


MERCHANT   MARINE  283 

like  a  seaport.  Flatboats  in  groups  and  fleets  came 
drifting  to  its  levees  heavy  laden  with  the  products  of  the 
west  and  south,  the  output  of  the  northern  farms  and 
mills,  and  the  southern  plantations.  On  the  crowded 
river  bank  would  be  disembarked  goods  drawn  from 
far-off  New  England,  which  had  been  dragged  over  the 
mountains  and  sent  down  the  Ohio  to  the  Mississippi; 
furs  from  northern  Minnesota  or  Wisconsin;  lumber  in 
the  rough,  or  shaped  into  planks,  from  the  mills  along 
the  Ohio ;  whisky  from  Kentucky,  pork  and  flour  from 
Illinois,  cattle,  horses,  hemp,  fabrics,  tobacco,  everything 
that  men  at  home  or  abroad,  could1  need  or  crave,  was 
gathered  up  by  enterprising  traders  along  three  thousand 
miles  of  waterway,  and  brought  hither  by  clumsy  rafts 
and  flatboats,  and  scarcely  less  clumsy  steamboats,  for 
distribution  up  and  down  other  rivers,  and  shipment  to 
foreign  lands. 

At  New  Orleans  there  was  a  like  deposit  of  all  the 
products  of  that  rich  valley,  an  empire  in  itself.  There 
grain,  cotton,  lumber,  live  stock,  furs,  the  output  of  the 
farms  and  the  spoils  of  the  chase,  were  transferred  to 
ocean-going  ships  and  sent  to  foreign  markets.  Specu- 
lative spirits  planned  for  the  day,  when  this  rehandling  of 
cargoes  at  the  Crescent  City  would  be  no  longer  neces- 
sary, but  ships  would  clear  from  Louisville  or  St.  Louis 
to  Liverpool  or  Hamburg  direct.  A  fine  type  of  the 
American  sailor,  Commodore  Whipple,  who  had  won  his 
title  by  good  sea-fighting  in  the  Revolutionary  War,  gave 
great  encouragement  to  this  hope,  in  1800,  by  taking  the 
full-rigged  ship  "St.  Clair,"  with  a  cargo  of  pork  and 
flour,  from  Marietta,  Ohio,  down  the  Ohio,  over  the  falls 
at  Louisville,  thence  down  the  Mississippi,  and  round  by 
sea  to  Havana,  and  so  on  to  Philadelphia.  This  really 
notable  exploit — to  the  success  of  which  good  luck  con- 


284  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

tributed  almost  as  much  as  good  seamanship — aroused  the 
greatest  enthusiasm.  The  Commodore  returned  home 
overland,  from  Philadelphia.  His  progress,  slow  enough, 
at  best,  was  checked  by  ovations,  complimentary  ad- 
dresses, and  extemporized  banquets.  He  was  the  man  of 
the  moment.  The  poetasters,  who  were  quite  as  numer- 
ous in  the  early  days  of  the  republic,  as  the  true  poets 
were  scarce,  signalized  his  exploit  in  verse. 

"The  Triton  crieth, 

'Who  cometh  now  from  shore?' 
Neptune  replieth, 

'  "Pis  the  old  Commodore. 
Long  has  it  been  since  I  saw  him  before. 
In  the  year  '75  from  Columbia  he  came, 
The  pride  of  the  Briton,  on  ocean  to  tame. 

But  now  he  comes  from  western  woods, 
Descending  slow,  with  gentle  floods, 
The  pioneer  of  a  mighty  train, 
Which  commerce  brings  to  my  domain.' " 

But  Neptune  and  the  Triton  had  no  further  occasion 
to  exchange  notes  of  astonishment  upon  the  appearance  of 
river-built  ships  on  the  ocean.  The  "St.  Clair"  was  the 
first  and  last  experiment  of  the  sort.  Late  in  the  nineties, 
the  United  States  Government  tried  building  a  torpedo- 
boat  at  Dubuque  for  ocean  service,  but  the  result  was  not 
encouraging. 

Year  after  year  the  steamboats  multiplied,  not  only 
on  the  rivers  of  the  West,  but  on  those  leading  from  the 
Atlantic  seaboard  into  the  interior.  It  may  be  said  justly 
that  the  application  of  steam  to  purposes  of  navigation 
made  the  American  people  face  fairly  about.  Long  they 
had  stood,  looking  outward,  gazing  across  the  sea  to 
Europe,  their  sole  market,  both  for  buying  and  for  selling. 


MERCHANT  MARINE  285 

But  now  the  rich  lands  beyond  the  mountains,  inviting 
settlers,  and  cut  up  by  streams  which  offered  paths  for  the 
most  rapid  and  comfortable  method  of  transportation 
then  known,  commanded  their  attention.  Immigrants  no 
longer  stopped  in  stony  New  England,  or  in  Virginia, 
already  dominated  by  an  aristocratic  land-owning  class, 
but  pressed  on  to  Kentucky,  Ohio,  Tennessee,  and  Illinois. 
As  the  lands  filled  up,  the  little  steamers  pushed  their 
noses  up  new  streams,  seeking  new  markets.  The  Cum- 
berland, and  the  Tennessee,  the  Missouri,  the  Arkansas, 
the  Red,  the  Tombigbee,  and  the  Chattahoochee  were 
stirred  by  the  churning  wheels,  and  over  their  forests 
floated  the  mournful  sough  of  the  high-pressure  exhaust. 

In  1840,  a  count  kept  at  Cairo,  showed  4566  vessels 
had  passed  that  point  during  the  year.  By  1848,  a  "ban- 
ner" year,  in  the  history  of  navigation  on  the  Mississippi, 
traffic  was  recorded  thus : 

25  vessels  plying  between  Louisville,  New  Orleans  and 

Cincinnati 8,484  tons 

7  between  Nashville  and  New  Orleans 2,585  tons 

4  between  Florence  and  New  Orleans 1,617  tons 

4  in  St.  Louis  local  trade. 1,001  tons 

7  in  local  cotton  trade 2,016  tons 

River  "tramps"  and  unclassified 23,206  tons 

It  may  be  noted  that  in  all  the  years  of  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Mississippi  shipping,  there  was  comparatively 
little  increase  in  the  size  of  the  individual  boats.  The 
"Vesuvius,"  built  in  1814,  was  480  tons  burthen,  160  feet 
long,  28.6  feet  beam,  and  drew  from  five  to  six  feet.  The 
biggest  boats  of  later  years  were  but  little  larger. 

The  aristocrat  of  the  Mississippi  River  steamboat 
was  the  pilot.  To  him  all  men  deferred.  So  far  as  the 
river  service  furnished  a  parallel  to  the  autocratic  au- 
thority of  the  sea-going  captain  or  master,  he  was  it.  All 


286  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

matters  pertaining  to  the  navigation  of  the  boat  were  in 
his  domain,  and  right  zealously  he  guarded  his  authority 
and  his  dignity.  The  captain  might  determine  such  trivial 
matters  as  hiring  or  discharging  men,  buying  fuel,  or 


THE  MISSISSIPPI  PILOT 


contracting  for  freight;  the  clerk  might  lord  it  over  the 
passengers,  and  the  mate  domineer  over  the  black  rousta- 
bouts ;  but  the  pilot  moved  along  in  a  sort  of  isolated 


MERCHANT  MARINE  287 

grandeur,  the  true  monarch  of  all  he  surveyed.  If,  in  his 
judgment  the  course  of  wisdom  was  to  tie  up  to  an  old 
sycamore  tree  on  the  bank  and  remain  motionless  all 
night,  the  boat  tied  up.  The  grumblings  of  passengers 
and  the  disapproval  of  the  captain  availed  naught,  nor 
did  the  captain  often  venture  upon  either  criticism  or  sug- 
gestion to  the  lordly  pilot,  who  was  prone  to  resent  such 
invasion  of  his  dignity  in  ways  that  made  trouble.  Indeed, 
during  the  flush  times  on  the  Mississippi,  the  pilots  were 
a  body  of  men  possessing  painfully  acquired  knowledge 
and  skill,  and  so  organized  as  to  protect  all  the  privileges 
which  their  attainments  should  win  for  them.  The  ability 
to  "run"  the  great  river  from  St.  Louis  to  New  Orleans 
was  not  lightly  won,  nor,  for  that  matter,  easily  retained, 
for  the  Mississippi  is  ever  a  fickle  flood,  with  changing 
landmarks  and  shifting  channel.  In  all  the  great  volume 
of  literature  bearing  on  the  story  of  the  river,  the  diffi- 
culties of  its  conquest  are  nowhere  so  truly  recounted  as  in 
Mark  Twain's  Life  on  the  Mississippi,  the  humorous  qual- 
ity of  which  does  not  obscure,  but  rather  enhances  its  value 
as  a  picturesque  and  truthful  story  of  the  old-time  pilot's 
life.  The  pilot  began  his  work  in  boyhood  as  a  "cub" 
to  a  licensed  pilot.  His  duties  ranged  from  bringing  re- 
freshments up  to  the  pilot-house,  to  holding  the  wheel 
when  some  straight  stretch  or  clear,  deep  channel  offered 
his  master  a  chance  to  leave  his  post  for  a  few  minutes. 
For  strain  on  the  memory,  his  education  is  comparable 
only  to  the  Chinese  system  of  liberal  culture,  which  com- 
prehends learning  by  rote  some  tens  of  thousands  of 
verses  from  the  works  of  Confucius  and  other  philoso- 
phers of  the  far  East.  Beginning  at  New  Orleans,  he  had 
to  commit  to  memory  the  name  and  appearance  of  every 
point  of  land,  inlet,  river  or  bayou  mouth,  "cut-off,"  light, 
plantation  and  hamlet  on  either  bank  of  the  river  all  the 


288  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

way  to  St.  Louis.  Then,  he  had  to  learn  them  all  in  their 
opposite  order,  quite  an  independent  task,  as  all  of  us  who 
learned  the  multiplication  table  backward  in  the  days  of 
our  youth,  will  readily  understand.  These  landmarks 
it  was  needful  for  him  to  recognize  by  day  and  by  night, 
through  fog  or  driving  rain,  when  the  river  was  swollen 
by  spring  floods,  or  shrunk  in  summer  to  a  yellow  ribbon 
meandering  through  a  Sahara  of  sand.  He  had  need  to 
recognize  at  a  glance  the  ripple  on  the  water  that  told  of 
a  lurking  sand-bar,  and  distinguish  it  from  the  almost 
identical  ripple  that  a  brisk  breeze  would  raise.  Most 
perplexing  of  the  perils  that  beset  river  navigation  are 
the  "snags,"  or  sunken  logs  that  often  obstruct  the  chan- 
nel. Some  towering  oak  or  pine,  growing  in  lusty 
strength  for  its  half-century  or  more  by  the  brink  of  the 
upper  reaches  of  one  of  the  Mississippi  system  would,  in 
time,  be  undermined  by  the  flood  and  fall  into  the  rushing 
tide.  For  weeks  it  would  be  rolled  along  the  shallows ; 
its  leaves  and  twigs  rotting  off,  its  smaller  branches  break- 
ing short,  until  at  last,  hundreds  of  miles,  perhaps,  below 
the  scene  of  its  fall,  it  would  lodge  fair  in  the  channel. 
The  gnarled  and  matted  mass  of  boughs  would  ordinarily 
cling  like  an  anchor  to  the  sandy  bottom,  while  the  buoy- 
ant trunk,  as  though  struggling  to  break  away,  would 
strain  upward  obliquely  to  within  a  few  inches  of  the 
surface  of  the  muddy  water,  which — too  thick  to  drink 
and  too  thin  to  plough,  as  the  old  saying  went — gave 
no  hint  of  this  concealed  peril ;  but  the  boat  running  fairly 
upon  it,  would  have  her  bows  stove  in  and  go  quickly  to 
the  bottom.  After  the  United  States  took  control  of  the 
river  and  began  spending  its  millions  annually  in  improv- 
ing it  for  navigation  and  protecting  the  surrounding 
country  against  its  overflows,  "snag-boats"  were  put  on 
the  river,  equipped  with  special  machinery  for  dragging 


MERCHANT  MARINE  289 

these  fallen  forest  giants  from  the  channel,  so  that  of  late 
years  accidents  from  this  cause  have  been  rare.  But  for 
many  years  the  overman's  chief  reliance  was  that  curious 
instinct  or  second  sight  which  enabled  the  trained  pilot  to 
pick  his  way  along  the  most  tortuous  channel  in  the 
densest  fog,  or  to  find  the  landing  of  some  obscure  planta- 
tion on  a  night  blacker  than  the  blackest  of  the  rousta- 
bouts, who  moved  lively  to  the  incessant  cursing  of  the 
mate. 

The  Mississippi  River  steamboat  of  the  golden  age 
on  the  river — the  type,  indeed,  which  still  persists — was  a 
triumph  of  adaptability  to  the  service  for  which  she  was 
designed.  More  than  this — she  was  an  egregious  archi- 
tectural sham.  She  was  a  success  in  her  light  draught, 
six  to  eight  feet,  at  most,  and  in  her  prodigious  carry- 
ing capacity.  It  was  said  of  one  of  these  boats,  when 
skilfully  loaded  by  a  gang  of  practical  roustabouts,  under 
the  direction  of  an  experienced  mate,  that  the  freight  she 
carried,  if  unloaded  on  the  bank,  would  make  a  pile  bigger 
than  the  boat  herself.  The  hull  of  the  vessel  was  in- 
variably of  wood,  broad  of  beam,  light  of  draught,  built 
"to  run  on  a  heavy  dew,"  and  with  only  the  rudiments  of 
a  keel.  Some  freight  was  stowed  in  the  hold,  but  the 
engines  were  not  placed  there,  but  on  the  main  deck,  built 
almost  flush  with  the  water,  and  extending  unbroken  from 
stem  to  stern.  Often  the  engines  were  in  pairs,  so  that 
the  great  paddle-wheels  could  be  worked  independently 
of  each  other.  The  finest  and  fastest  boats  were  side- 
wheelers,  but  a  large  wheel  at  the  stern,  or  two  stern 
wheels,  side  by  side,  capable  of  independent  action,  were 
common  modes  of  propulsion.  The  escape-pipes  of  the 
engine  were  carried  high  aloft,  above  the  topmost  of  the 
tiers  of  decks,  and  from  each  one  alternately,  when  the 
boat  was  under  way,  would  burst  a  gush  of  steam,  with 


290 


THE   STORY   OF    OUR 


a  sound  like  a  dull  puff,  followed  by  a  prolonged  sigh, 
which  could  be  heard  far  away  beyond  the  dense  forests 
that  bordered  the  river.  A  row  of  posts,  always  in  ap- 
pearance, too  slender  for  the  load  they  bore,  supported 
the  saloon  deck  some  fifteen  feet  above  the  main  deck. 
When  business  was  good  on  the  river,  the  space  within 
was  packed  tight  with  freight,  leaving  barely  room  enough 
for  passenger  gangways,  and  for  the  men  feeding  the 


A  DECK  LOAD  OF  COTTON 

roaring  furnaces  with  pine  slabs.  A  great  steamer  com- 
ing down  to  New  Orleans  from  the  cotton  country  about 
the  Red  River,  loaded  to  the  water's  edge  with  cotton 
bales,  so  that,  from  the  shore,  she  looked  herself  like  a 
monster  cotton  bale,  surmounted  by  tiers  of  snowy  cabins 
and  pouring  forth  steam  and  smoke  from  towering  pipes, 
was  a  sight  long  to  be  remembered.  It  is  a  sight,  too, 


MERCHANT  MARINE  291 

that  is  still  common  on  the  lower  river,  where  the  business 
of  gathering  up  the  planter's  crop  and  getting  it  to  mar- 
ket has  not  yet  passed  wholly  into  the  hands  of  the 
railroads. 

Above  the  cargo  and  the  roaring  furnaces  rose  the 
cabins,  two  or  three  tiers,  one  atop  the  other,  the  topmost 
one  extending  only  about  one-third  of  the  length  of  the 
boat,  and  called  the  "Texas."  The  main  saloon  extending 
the  whole  length  of  the  boat,  save  for  a  bit  of  open  deck 
at  bow  and  stern,  was  in  comparison  with  the  average 
house  of  the  time,  palatial.  On  either  side  it  was  lined  by 
rows  of  doors,  each  opening  into  a  two-berthed  state- 
room. The  decoration  was  usually  ivory  white,  and  on 
the  main  panel  of  each  door  was  an  oil  painting  of  some 
romantic  landscape.  There  Chillon  brooded  over  the 
placid  azure  of  the  lake,  there  storms  broke  with  jagged 
lightning  in  the  Andes,  there  buxom  girls  trod  out  the 
purple  grapes  of  some  Italian  vineyard.  The  builders 
of  each  new  steamer  strove  to  eclipse  all  earlier  ones  in 
the  brilliancy  of  these  works  of  art,  and  discussion  of  the 
relative  merits  of  the  paintings  on  the  "Natchez"  and 
those  on  the  "Baton  Rouge"  came  to  be  the  chief  theme 
of  art  criticism  along  the  river.  Bright  crimson  carpet 
usually  covered  the  floor  of  the  long,  tunnel-like  cabin. 
Down  the  center  were  ranged  the  tables,  about  which, 
thrice  a  day,  the  hungry  passengers  gathered  to  be  fed, 
while  from  the  ceiling  depended  chandeliers,  from  which 
hung  prismatic  pendants,  tinkling  pleasantly  as  the  boat 
vibrated  with  the  throb  of  her  engines.  At  one  end  of 
the  main  saloon  was  the  ladies'  cabin,  discreetly  cut  off  by 
crimson  curtains ;  at  the  other,  the  bar,  which,  in  a  period 
when  copious  libations  of  alcoholic  drinks  were  at  least 
as  customary  for  men  as  the  cigar  to-day,  was  usually  a 
rallying  point  for  the  male  passengers. 


292  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

Far  up  above  the  yellow  river,  perched  on  top  of  the 
"Texas,"  or  topmost  tier  of  cabins,  was  the  pilot-house, 
that  honorable  eminence  of  glass  and  painted  wood  which 
it  was  the  ambition  of  every  boy  along  the  river  some  day 
to  occupy.  This  was  a  great  square  box,  walled  in 
mainly  with  glass.  Square  across  the  front  of  it  rose  the 
huge  wheel,  eight  feet  in  diameter,  sometimes  half-sunken 
beneath  the  floor,  so  that  the  pilot,  in  moments  of  stress, 
might  not  only  grip  it  with  his  hands,  but  stand  on  its 
spokes,  as  well.  Easy  chairs  and  a  long  bench  made  up 
the  furniture  of  this  sacred  apartment.  In  front  of  it 
rose  the  two  towering  iron  chimneys,  joined,  near  the  top 
by  an  iron  grating  that  usually  carried  some  gaudily  col- 
ored or  gilded  device  indicative  of  the  line  to  which  the 
boat  belonged.  Amidships,  and  aft  of  the  pilot-house, 
rose  the  two  escape  pipes,  from  which  the  hoarse,  pro- 
longed s-o-o-ugh  of  the  high  pressure  exhaust  burst  at 
half-minute  intervals,  carrying  to  listeners  miles  away, 
the  news  that  a  boat  was  coming. 

All  this  edifice  above  the  hull  of  the  boat,  was  of  the 
flimsiest  construction,  built  of  pine  scantling,  liberally 
decorated  with  scroll-saw  work,  and  lavishly  covered 
with  paint  mixed  with  linseed  oil.  Beneath  it  were  two, 
four,  or  six  roaring  furnaces  fed  with  rich  pitch-pine,  and 
open  on  every  side  to  drafts  and  gusts.  From  the  top 
of  the  great  chimneys  poured  volcanic  showers  of  sparks, 
deluging  the  inflammable  pile  with  a  fiery  rain.  The 
marvel  is  not  that  every  year  saw  its  quotum  of  steamers 
burned  to  the  water's  edge,  but,  rather,  that  the  quota 
were  proportionately  so  small. 

At  midnight  this  apparent  inflammability  was  even 
more  striking.  Lights  shone  from  the  windows  of  the 
long  row  of  cabins,  and  wherever  there  was  a  chink,  or 
a  bit  of  glass,  or  a  latticed  blind,  the  radiance  streamed 


MERCHANT   MARINE  293 

forth  as  though  within  were  a  great  mass  of  fire,  strug- 
gling, in  every  way,  to  escape.  Below,  the  boiler  deck  was 
dully  illumined  by  smoky  lanterns ;  but  when  one  of  the 
great  doors  of  the  roaring  furnace  was  thrown  open,  that 
the  half -naked  black  firemen  might  throw  in  more  pitch- 
pine  slabs,  there  shone  forth  such  a  fiery  glare,  that  the 
boat  and  the  machinery — working  in  the  open,  and  plain 


FEEDING   THE   FUKNACE 

to  view — seemed  wrapped  in  a  Vesuvius  of  flame,  and  the 
sturdy  stokers  and  lounging  roustabouts  looked  like  the 
fiends  in  a  fiery  inferno.  The  danger  was  not  merely 
apparent,  but  very  real.  During  the  early  days  of  steam- 
boating,  fires  and  boiler  explosions  were  of  frequent  oc- 
currence. A  river  boat,  once  ablaze,  could  never  be 
saved,  and  the  one  hope  for  the  passengers  was  that  it 


294  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

might  be  beached  before  the  flames  drove  them  over- 
board. The  endeavor  to  do  this  brought  out  some  ex- 
amples of  magnificent  heroism  among  captains,  pilots 
and  engineers,  who,  time  and  again,  stood  manfully  al 
their  posts,  though  scorched  by  flames,  and  cut  off  frorr 
any  hope  of  escape,  until  the  boat's  prow  was  thrust  well 
into  the  bank,  and  the  passengers  were  all  saved.  The 
pilots,  in  the  presence  of  such  disaster,  were  in  the  soresl 
straits,  and  were,  moreover,  the  ones  of  the  boat's  com- 
pany upon  whom  most  depended  the  fate  of  those  on 
board.  Perched  at  the  very  top  of  a  large  tinaer-box, 
all  avenues  of  escape  except  a  direct  plunge  overboard 
were  quickly  closed  to  them.  If  they  left  the  wheel  the 
current  would  inevitably  swing  the  boat's  head  down- 
stream, and  she  would  drift,  aimlessly,  a  flaming  funeral 
pyre  for  all  on  board.  Many  a  pilot  stood,  with  clenched 
teeth,  and  eyes  firm  set  upon  the  distant  shore,  while  the 
fire  roared  below  and  behind  him,  and  the  terrified 
passengers  edged  further  and  further  forward  as  the 
flames  pressed  their  way  toward  the  bow,  until  at  last 
came  the  grinding  sound  under  the  hull,  and  the  sudden 
shock  that  told  of  shoal  water  and  safety.  Then,  those 
on  the  lower  deck  might  drop  over  the  side,  or  swarm 
along  the  windward  gangplank  to  safety,  but  the  pilot  too 
often  was  hemmed  in  by  the  flames,  and  perished  with 
his  vessel. 

In  the  year  1840  alone  there  were  109  steamboat  dis- 
asters chronicled,  with  a  loss  of  fifty-nine  vessels  and 
205  lives.  The  high-pressure  boilers  used  on  the  river, 
cheaply  built,  and  for  many  years  not  subjected  to  any 
official  inspection,  contributed  more  than  their  share  to 
the  list  of  accidents.  Boiler  explosions  were  so  common 
as  to  be  reckoned  upon  every  time  a  voyage  was  begun. 
Passengers  were  advised  to  secure  staterooms  aft  when 


MERCHANT  MARINE  295 

possible,  as  the  forward  part  of  the  boat  was  the  more  apt 
to  be  shattered  if  the  boiler  "went  up."  Every  river 
town  had  its  citizens  who  had  survived  an  explosion,  and 
the  stock  form  into  which  to  put  the  humorous  quip  or 
story  of  the  time  was  to  have  it  told  by  the  clerk  going 
up  as  he  met  the  captain  in  the  air  coming  down,  with 
the  debris  of  the  boat  flying  all  about  them.  As  the  river 
boats  improved  in  character,  disasters  of  this  sort  became 
less  frequent,  and  the  United  States,  by  establishing  a 
rigid  system  of  boiler  inspection,  and  compelling  engi- 
neers to  undergo  a  searching  examination  into  their  fitness 
before  receiving  a  license,  has  done  much'  to  guard  against 
them.  Yet  to-day,  we  hear  all  too  frequently  of  river 
steamers  blown  to  bits,  and  all  on  board  lost,  though  it  is 
a  form  of  disaster  almost  unknown  on  Eastern  waters 
where  crowded  steamboats  ply  the  Sound,  the  Hudson, 
the  Connecticut,  and  the  Potomac,  year  after  year,  with 
never  a  disaster.  The  cheaper  material  of  Western  boats 
has  something  to  do  with  this  difference,  but  a  certain 
happy-go-lucky,  devil-may-care  spirit,  which  has  charac- 
terized the  Western  riverman  since  the  days  of  the  broad- 
horns,  is  chiefly  responsible.  Most  often  an  explosion  is 
the  result  of  gross  carelessness — a  sleepy  engineer,  and 
a  safety-valve  "out  of  kilter,"  as  too  many  of  them  often 
are,  have  killed  their  hundreds  on  the  Western  rivers. 
Sometimes,  however,  the  almost  criminal  rashness,  of 
which  captains  were  guilty,  in  a  mad  rush  for  a  little  cheap 
glory,  ended  in  a  deafening  crash,  the  annihilation  of  a 
good  boat,  and  the  death  of  scores  of  her  people  by  drown- 
ing, or  the  awful  torture  of  inhaling  scalding  steam. 
Rivalry  between  the  different  boats  was  fierce,  and  now 
and  then  at  the  sight  of  a  competitor  making  for  a  landing 
where  freight  and  passengers  awaited  the  first  boat  to 
land  her  gangplank,  the  alert  captain  would  not  un- 


296  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

naturally  take  some  risks  to  get  there  first.  Those  were 
the  moments  that  resulted  in  methods  in  the  engine  room 
picturesquely  described  as  "feeding  the  fires  with  fat 
bacon  and  resin,  and  having  a  nigger  sit  on  the  safety 
valve."  To  such  impromptu  races  might  be  charged  the 
most  terrifying  accidents  in  the  history  of  the  river. 

But  the  great  races,  extending  sometimes  for  more 
than  a  thousand  miles  up  the  river,  and  carefully  planned 
for  months  in  advance,  were  seldom,  if  ever,  marred  by 
an  accident.  For  then  every  man  on  both  boats  was  on 
the  alert,  from  pilot  down  to  fuel  passer.  The  boat  was 
trimmed  by  guidance  of  a  spirit  level  until  she  rode  the 
water  at  precisely  the  draft  that  assured  the  best  speed. 
Her  hull  was  scraped  and  oiled,  her  machinery  over- 
hauled, and  her  fuel  carefully  selected.  Picked  men  made 
up  her  crew,  and  all  the  upper  works  that  could  be  dis- 
posed of  were  landed  before  the  race,  in  order  to  decrease 
air  resistance.  It  was  the  current  pleasantry  to  describe 
the  captain  as  shaving  off  his  whiskers  lest  they  catch 
the  breeze,  and  parting  his  hair  in  the  middle,  that  the 
boat  might  be  the  better  trimmed.  Few  passengers  were 
taken,  for  they  could  not  be  relied  upon  to  "trim  ship," 
but  would  be  sure  to  crowd  to  one  side  or  the  other  at  a 
critical  moment.  Only  through  freight  was  shipped — 
and  little  of  that — for  there  would  be  no  stops  made  from 
starting-point  to  goal.  Of  course,  neither  boat  could 
carry  all  the  fuel — pine-wood  slabs — needed  for  a  long 
voyage,  but  by  careful  prearrangement,  great  "flats" 
loaded  with  wood,  awaited  them  at  specified  points  in  mid- 
stream. The  steamers  slowed  to  half-speed,  the  flats 
were  made  fast  alongside  by  cables,  and  nimble  Kegroes 
transferred  the  wood,  while  the  race  went  on.  At  every 
riverside  town  the  wharves  and  roofs  would  be  black  with 
people,  awaiting  the  two  rivals,  whose  appearance  could 


MERCHANT  MARINE  297 

be  foretold  almost  as  exactly  as  that  of  a  railway  train 
running  on  schedule  time.  The  firing  of  rifles  and  cannon, 
the  blowing  of  horns,  the  waving  of  flags,  greeted  the 
racers  from  the  shores  by  day,  and  great  bonfires  saluted 
them  by  night.  At  some  of  the  larger  towns  they  would 
touch  for  a  moment  to  throw  off  mail,  or  to  let  a  passenger 
leap  ashore.  Then  every  nerve  of  captain,  pilot,  and  crew 
was  on  edge  with  the  effort  to  tie  up  and  get  away  first. 
Up  in  the  pilot-house  the  great  man  of  the  wheel  took 
shrewd  advantage  of  every  eddy  and  back  current ;  out  on 
the  guards  the  humblest  roustabout  stood  ready  for  a  life- 
risking  leap  to  get  the  hawser  to  the  dock  at  the  earliest 
instant.  All  the  operations  of  the  boat  had  been  reduced 
to  an  exact  science,  so  that  when  the  crack  packets  were 
pitted  against  each  other  in  a  long  race,  their  maneuvers 
would  be  as  exactly  matched  in  point  of  time  consumed 
as  those  of  two  yachts  sailing  for  the  "America's"  cup. 
Side  by  side,  they  would  steam  for  hundreds  of  miles, 
jockeying  all  the  way  for  the  most  favorable  course.  It  was 
a  fact  that  often  such  boats  were  so  evenly  matched  that 
victory  would  hang  almost  entirely  on  the  skill  of  the 
pilot,  and  where  of  two  pilots  on  one  boat  one  was 
markedly  inferior,  his  watch  at  the  wheel  could  be 
detected  by  the  way  the  rival  boat  forged  ahead.  During 
the  golden  days  on  the  river,  there  were  many  of  these 
races,  but  the  most  famous  of  them  all  was  that  between 
the  "Robert  E.  Lee"  and  the  "Natchez,"  in  1870.  These 
boats,  the  pride  of  all  who  lived  along  the  river  at  that 
time,  raced  from  New  Orleans  to  St.  Louis.  At  Natchez, 
268  miles,  they  were  six  minutes  apart;  at  Cairo,  1024 
miles,  the  "Lee"  was  three  hours  and  thirty-four  minutes 
ahead.  She  came  in  winner  by  six  hours  and  thirty-six 
minutes,  but  the  officers  of  the  "Natchez"  claimed  that 
this  was  not  a  fair  test  of  the  relative  speed  of  the  boats, 


298  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

as  they  had  been  delayed  by  fog  and  for  repairs  to  ma- 
chinery for  about  seven  hours. 

Spectacular  and  picturesque  was  the  riverside  life  of 
the  great  Mississippi  towns  in  the  steamboat  days.  Mark 
Twain  has  described  the  scenes  along  the  levee  at  New 
Orleans  at  "steamboat  time"  in  a  bit  of  word-painting, 
which  brings  all  the  rush  and  bustle,  the  confusion,  tur- 
moil and  din,  clearly  to  the  eye : 

"It  was  always  the  custom  for  boats  to  leave  New 
Orleans  between  four  and  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon. 
From  three  o'clock  onward,  they  would  be  burning  resin 
and  pitch-pine  (the  sign  of  preparation)  and  so  one  had 
the  spectacle  of  a  rank,  some  two  or  three  miles  long,  of 
tall,  ascending  columns  of  coal-black  smoke,  a  colonnade 
which  supported  a  roof  of  the  same  smoke,  blending  to- 
gether and  spreading  abroad  over  the  city.  Every  out- 
ward-bound boat  had  its  flag  flying  at  the  jack-staff,  and 
sometimes  a  duplicate  on  the  verge-staff  astern.  Two 
or  three  miles  of  mates  were  commanding  and  swearing 
with  more  than  usual  emphasis.  Countless  processions 
of  freight,  barrels,  and  boxes,  were  spinning  athwart  the 
levee,  and  flying  aboard  the  stage-planks.  Belated  pas- 
sengers were  dodging  and  skipping  among  these  frantic 
things,  hoping  to  reach  the  forecastle  companion-way 
alive,  but  having  their  doubts  about  it.  Women  with 
reticules  and  bandboxes  were  trying  to  keep  up  with 
husbands  freighted  with  carpet  sacks  and  crying  babies, 
and  making  a  failure  of  it  by  losing  their  heads  in  the 
whirl  and  roar  and  general  distraction.  Drays  and  bag- 
gage-vans were  clattering  hither  and  thither  in  a  wild 
hurry,  every  now  and  then  getting  blocked  and  jammed 
together,  and  then,  during  ten  seconds,  one  could  not  see 
them  for  the  profanity,  except  vaguely  and  dimly.  Every 
windlass  connected  with  every  forehatch  from  one  end 


MERCHANT  MARINE  299 

of  that  long  array  of  steamboats  to  the  other,  was  keeping 
up  a  deafening  whiz  and  whir,  lowering  freight  into  the 
hold,  and  the  half-naked  crews  of  perspiring  negroes  that 
worked  them  were  roaring  such  songs  as  'De  las'  sack! 
De  las'  sack ! !'  inspired  to  unimaginable  exaltation  by  the 
chaos  of  turmoil  and  racket  that  was  driving  everybody 
else  mad.  By  this  time  the  hurricane  and  boiler  decks 
of  the  packets  would  be  packed  and  black  with  passengers, 
the  last  bells  would  begin  to  clang  all  down  the  line,  and 
then  the  pow-wows  seemed  to  double.  In  a  moment  or 
two  the  final  warning  came,  a  simultaneous  din  of  Chinese 
gongs  with  the  cry,  'All  dat  aint  going,  please  to  get 
ashore/  and,  behold,  the  pow-wow  quadrupled.  People 
came  swarming  ashore,  overturning  excited  stragglers 
that  were  trying  to  swarm  aboard.  One  moment  later, 
a  long  array  of  stage-planks  was  being  hauled  in,  each 
with  its  customary  latest  passenger  clinging  to  the  end 
of  it,  with  teeth,  nails,  and  everything  else,  and  the  cus- 
tomary latest  procrastinator  making  a  wild  spring  ashore 
over  his  head. 

"Now  a  number  of  the  boats  slide  backward  into  the 
stream,  leaving  wide  gaps  in  the  serried  rank  of  steamers. 
Citizens  crowd  on  the  decks  of  boats  that  were  not  to  go, 
in  order  to  see  the  sight.  Steamer  after  steamer  straight- 
ens herself  up,  gathers  all  her  strength,  and  presently 
comes  swinging  by,  under  a  tremendous  head  of  steam, 
with  flags  flying,  smoke  rolling,  and  her  entire  crew  of 
firemen  and  deck  hands  (usually  swarthy  negroes) 
massed  together  on  the  forecastle,  the  best  voice  in  the 
lot  towering  in  their  midst  (being  mounted  on  the  cap- 
stan) waving  his  hat  or  a  flag,  all  roaring  in  a  mighty 
chorus,  while  the  parting  cannons  boom,  and  the  multi- 
tudinous spectators  swing  their  hats  and  huzza.  Steamer 


300  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

after  steamer  pulls  into  the  line,  and  the  stately  procession 
goes  winging  its  flight  up  the  river." 

Until  1865  the  steamboats  controlled  the  transporta- 
tion business  of  all  the  territory  drained  by  the  Mississippi 
and  its  tributaries.  But  two  causes  for  their  undoing 
had  already  begun  to  work.  The  long  and  fiercely- fought 
war  had  put  a  serious  check  to  the  navigation  of  the 
rivers.  For  long  months  the  Mississippi  was  barricaded 
by  the  Confederate  works  at  Island  Number  10,  at  New 
Madrid  and  at  Vicksburg.  Even  after  Grant  and  Farra- 
gut  had  burst  these  shackles  navigation  was  attended  with 
danger  from  guerrillas  on  the  banks  and  trade  was  dead. 
When  peace  brought  the  promise  of  better  things,  the 
railroads  were  there  to  take  advantage  of  it.  From  every 
side  they  were  pushing  their  way  into  New  Orleans, 
building  roadways  across  the  "trembling  prairies,"  and 
crossing  the  water-logged  country  about  the  Rigolets  on 
long  trestles.  They  penetrated  the  cotton  country  and 
the  mineral  country.  They  paralleled  the  Ohio,  the 
Tennessee,  and  the  Cumberland,  as  well  as  the  Father  of 
Waters,  and  the  steamboat  lines  began  to  feel  the  heavy 
hand  of  competition.  Captains  and  clerks  found  it  pru- 
dent to  abate  something  of  their  dignity.  Instead  of 
shippers  pleading  for  deck-room  on  the  boats,  the  boats' 
agents  had  to  do  the  pleading.  Instead  of  levees  crowded 
with  freight  awaiting  carriage  there  were  broad,  empty 
spaces  by  the  river's  bank,  while  the  railroad  freight- 
houses  up  town  held  the  bales  of  cotton,  the  bundles  of 
staves,  the  hogsheads  of  sugar,  the  shingles  and  lumber. 
On  long  hauls  the  railroads  quickly  secured  all  the  North 
and  South  business,  though  indeed,  the  hauling  of  freight 
down  the  river  for  shipment  to  Europe  was  ended  for 
both  railroads  and  steamboats,  so  far  as  the  products 
raised  north  of  the  Tennessee  line  was  concerned.  For 


MERCHANT   MARINE  301 

a  new  water  route  to  the  sea  had  been  opened  and  won- 
drously  developed.  The  Great  Lakes  were  the  shortest 
waterway  to  the  Atlantic,  and  New  York  dug  its  Erie 
Canal  which  afforded  an  outlet — pinched  and  straitened,  it 
is  true,  but  still  an  outlet — for  the  cargoes  of  the  lake 
schooners  and  the  early  steamers  of  the  unsalted  seas. 
With  the  entrance  of  the  Twentieth  Century  began  a 
decline  in  river  traffic  so  that  it  is  to-day  at  its  lowest  ebb. 
Its  decline  is  largely  due  to  the  unrelenting  hostility  of 
the  railroads,  which  not  only  refuse  traffic  arrangements 
with  river  boats,  but  buy  up  and  hold  .out  of  use  the  most 
advantageous  locations  for  docks  and  wharves.  In  1917 
the  volume  of  traffic  on  the  Mississippi  and  tributary 
waters  had  sunk  to  1,621,000  tons.  There  were  not 
lacking  efforts  to  revive  it,  though  not  in  the  form  of 
its  ancient  grandeur.  Passenger  traffic  was  virtually 
abandoned.  Freight,  it  was  believed  might  be  carried  in 
barges  towed  by  a  powerful  tug,  and  several  of  these 
barge  lines  were  in  contemplation  at  the  time  of  the  com- 
pletion of  this  book.  The  great  economic  advantage  to 
France  of  its  canals  and  canalized  waterways  was  demon- 
strated during  the  war,  as  never  before.  Indeed,  it  has 
been  held  by  good  authorities  that  except  for  her  canals 
France  could  never  have  kept  her  armies  at  the  front 
supplied  with  rations  and  the  material  of  war.  Stimu- 
lated by  this  record  the  United  States  is  sending  a  com- 
mission abroad  to  study  French  methods  of  interior 
water  transportation,  and  it  is  not  improbable  that  as 
freight  carriers  our  rivers  may  regain  the  importance 
they  have  now  lost.  But  the  glory  of  the  "old  times  on 
the  Mississippi,"  when  it  was  the  great  highway  of 
luxurious  travel  between  the  north  and  south  has  de- 
parted forever. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  NEW  ENGLAND  FISHERIES  —  THEIR  PART  IN  EFFECTING  THE 
SETTLEMENT  OF  AMERICA  —  THEIR  RAPID  DEVELOPMENT  — 
WIDE  EXTENT  OF  THE  TRADE  —  EFFORT  OF  LORD  NORTH  TO 
DESTROY  IT  —  THE  FISHERMEN  IN  THE  REVOLUTION  —  EFFORTS 
TO  ENCOURAGE  THE  INDUSTRY  —  ITS  PART  IN  POLITICS  AND 
DIPLOMACY  —  THE  FISHING  BANKS  <—  TYPES  OF  BOATS  — 
GROWTH  OF  THE  FISHING  COMMUNITIES  —  FARMERS  AND 
SAILORS  BY  TURNS  —  THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  FISHERMEN  — 
METHODS  OF  TAKING  MACKEREL  —  THE  SEINE  AND  THE  TRAWL 

—  SCANT  PROFITS  OF  THE  INDUSTRY  —  PERILS  OF  THE  BANKS 

—  SOME  PERSONAL  EXPERIENCES  —  THE  FOG  AND  THE  FAST 
LINERS  —  THE  TRIBUTE  OF  HUMAN  LIFE. 

'IpHE  summer  yachtsman  whiling  away  an  idle  month 
in  cruises  up  and  down  that  New  England  coast 
which,  once  stern  and  rock-bound,  has  come  to  be  the  smil- 
ing home  of  midsummer  pleasures,  encounters  at  each  lit- 
tle port  into  which  he  may  run,  moldering  and  decrepit 
wharves,  crowned  with  weatherbeaten  and  leaky  struc- 
tures, waterside  streets  lined  with  shingled  fish-houses  in 
an  advanced  stage  of  decay,  and  acres  of  those  low  plat- 
forms known  as  flakes,  on  which  at  an  earlier  day  the 
product  of  the  New  England  fisheries  was  spread  out  to 
dry  in  the  sun,  but  which  now  are  rapidly  disintegrating 
and  mingling  again  with  the  soil  from  which  the  wood 
of  their  structures  sprung.  Every  harbor  on  the  New 
England  coast,  from  New  Bedford  around  to  the  Cana- 
dian line,  bears  these  dumb  memorials  to  the  gradual  de- 
cadence of  what  was  once  our  foremost  national  industry. 
For  the  fisheries  which  once  nursed  for  us  a  school  of 


304  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

the  hardiest  seamen,  which  aroused  the  jealousy  of  Eng- 
land and  France,  which  built  up  our  seaport  towns,  and 
carried  our  flag  to  the  furthest  corners  of  the  globe, 
and  which  in  the  records  both  of  diplomacy  and  war  fill 
a  prominent  place  have  been  for  the  last  twenty  years 
appreciably  tending  to  disappear.  Many  causes  are  as- 
signed for  this.  The  growing  scarcity  of  certain  kinds 
of  fish,  the  repeal  of  encouraging  legislation,  a  change  in 
the  taste  of  certain  peoples  to  whom  we  shipped  large 
quantities  of  the  finny  game,  the  competition  of  Canadians 
and  Frenchmen,  the  great  development  of  the  salmon 
fisheries  and  salmon  canning  on  the  Pacific  coast,  all  have 
contributed  to  this  decay.  It  is  proper,  however,  to  note 
that  the  decadence  of  the  fisheries  is  to  some  extent  more 
apparent  than  real.  True,  there  are  fewer  towns  sup- 
ported by  this  industry,  fewer  boats  and  men  engaged  in 
it ;  but  in  part  this  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  steam  fishing 
boat  carrying  a  large  fleet  of  dories  accomplishes  in  one 
season  with  fewer  hands  eight  or  ten  times  the  work  that 
the  old-fashioned  pink  or  schooner  did.  And,  moreover, 
as  the  population  of  the  seaport  towns  has  grown,  the 
apparent  prominence  of  the  fishing  industry  has  de- 
creased, as  that  industry  has  not  grown  in  proportion  to 
the  population.  Forty  years  ago  Marblehead  and  Nan- 
tucket  were  simply  fishing  villages,  and  nothing  else.  To- 
day the  remnants  of  the  fishing  industry  attract  but  little 
attention,  in  the  face  of  the  vastly  more  profitable  and 
important  calling  of  entertaining  the  summer  visitor. 
New  Bedford  has  become  a  great  factory  town,  Lynn  and 
Hull  are  great  centers  for  the  shoemaking  industries. 

When  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  first  concluded  to  make 
their  journey  to  the  New  England  coast  and  sought  of 
the  English  king  a  charter,  they  were  asked  by  the  thrifty 
James,  what  profit  might  arise.  "Fishing,"  was  the 


MERCHANT   MARINE  305 

answer.  Whereupon,  according  to  the  narrative  of  Ed- 
ward Winslow,  the  king  replied,  "So,  God  have  my  soul; 
'tis  an  honest  trade ;  'twas  the  apostles'  own  calling."  The 
redoubtable  Captain  John  Smith,  making  his  way  to  the 
New  England  coast  from  Virginia,  happened  to  drop  a 
fishline  over  what  is  known  now  as  George's  Bank.  The 
miraculous  draught  of  fishes  which  followed  did  not 
awaken  in  his  mind  the  same  pious  reflections  to  which 
King  James  gave  expression.  Rather  was  he  moved  to 
exultation  over  the  profit  which  he  saw  there.  "Truly," 
he  said,  in  a  letter  to  his  correspondent  in  London,  "It 
is  a  pleasant  thing  to  drop  a  line  and  pull  up  threepence, 
fivepence,  and  sixpence  as  fast  as  one  may  haul  in."  The 
gallant  soldier  of  fortune  was  evidently  quite  awake  to 
the  possibilities  of  profit  upon  which  he  had  stumbled. 
Yet,  probably  even  he  would  have  been  amazed  could  he 
have  known  that  within  fifty  years  not  all  the  land  in  the 
colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  nor  in  the  Providence  and 
Rhode  Island  plantations  produced  so  much  of  value  as 
the  annual  crop  the  fishermen  harvested  on  the  shallow 
banks  off  Cape  Cod. 

As  early  as  1633  fish  began  to  be  exported  from  Bos- 
ton, and  very  shortly  thereafter  the  industry  had  assumed 
so  important  a  position  that  the  general  court  adopted 
laws  for  its  encouragement,  exempting  vessels,  and  stock 
from  taxation,  and  granting  to  fishermen  immunity  from 
military  duty.  At  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
Massachusetts  was  exporting  over  $400,00x3  worth  of  fish 
annually.  From  that  time  until  well  into  the  middle  of 
the  last  century  the  fisheries  were  so  thoroughly  the  lead- 
ing industry  of  Massachusetts  that  the  gilded  codfish 
which  crowns  the  dome  of  the  State  House  at  Boston,  only 
fitly  typifies  by  its  prominence  above  the  city  the  part  which 
its  natural  prototypes  played  in  building  up  the  common- 


306  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

wealth.  In  the  Revolution  and  the  early  wars  of  the 
United  States,  the  fishermen  suffered  severely.  Crowded 
together  on  the  banks,  they  were  easy  prey  for  the  British 
cruisers,  who,  in  time  of  peace  or  in  time  of  war,  treated 
them  about  as  they  chose,  impressing  such  sailors  as 
seemed  useful,  and  seizing  such  of  their  cargo  as  the  whim 
of  the  captain  of  the  cruiser  might  suggest.  And  even 
before  the  colonies  had  attained  the  status  of  a  nation,  the 
jealousy  and  hostility  of  Great  Britain  bore  heavily  on  the 
fortunes  of  the  New  England  fishermen.  It  was  then, 
as  it  has  been  until  the  present  day,  the  policy  of  Great 
Britain  to  build  up  in  every  possible  way  its  navy,  and 
to  encourage  by  all  imaginable  devices  the  development 
of  a  large  body  of  able  seamen,  by  whom  the  naval  vessels 
might  be  manned.  Accordingly  parliament  undertook 
to  discourage  the  American  fisherman  by  hostile  legisla- 
tion, so  that  a  body  of  deep-sea  fishermen  might  be  created 
claiming  English  ports  for  their  home.  At  first  the  effort 
was  made  to  prohibit  the  colonies  from  exporting  fish. 
The  great  Roman  Catholic  countries  of  France,  Spain, 
and  Portugal  took  by  far  the  greater  share  of  the  fish 
sent  out,  though  the  poorer  qualities  were  shipped  to  the 
West  Indies  and  there  exchanged  for  sugar  and  molasses. 
Against  this  trade  Lord  North  leveled  some  of  his  most 
offensive  measures,  proposing  bills,  indeed,  so  unjust  and 
tyrannical  that  outcries  were  raised  against  them  even  in 
the  British  House  of  Lords.  To  cut  off  intercourse  with 
the  foreign  peoples  who  took  the  fish  of  the  Yankees  by 
hundreds  and  thousands  of  quintals,  and  gave  in  return 
rum,  molasses,  and  bills  of  exchange  on  England,  to  de- 
stroy the  calling  in  which  every  little  New  England  sea- 
coast  village  was  interested  above  all  things,  Lord  North 
first  proposed  to  prohibit  the  colonies  trading  in  fish  with 
any  country  save  the  "mother"  country,  and  secondly,  to 


MERCHANT   MARINE  307 

refuse  to  the  people  of  New  England  the  right  to  fish  on 
the  Great  Banks  of  Newfoundland,  thus  confining  them 
to  the  off-shore  banks,  which  already  began  to  show  signs 
of  being  fished  out.  Even  a  hostile  parliament  was 
shocked  by  these  measures.  Every  witness  who  appeared 
before  the  House  of  Commons  testified  that  they  would 
work  irreparable  injury  to  New  England,  would  rob  six 
thousand  of  her  able-bodied  men  of  their  means  of  liveli- 
hood, and  would  drive  ten  thousand  more  into  other  voca- 
tions. But  the  power  of  the  ministry  forced  the  bills 
through,  though  twenty-one  peers  joined  in  a  solemn  pro- 
test. "We  dissent,"  said  they,  "because  the  attempt  to 
coerce,  by  famine,  the  whole  body  of  the  inhabitants  of 
great  and  populous  provinces,  is  without  example  in  the 
history  of  this,  or,  perhaps,  of  any  civilized  nations."  This 
was  in  1775,  and  the  revolution  in  America  had  already 
begun.  It  was  the  policy  of  Lord  North  to  force  the 
colonists  to  stop  their  opposition  to  unjust  and  offensive 
laws  by  imposing  upon  them  other  laws  more  unjust  and 
more  offensive  still — a  sort  of  homeopathic  treatment, 
not  infrequently  applied  by  tyrants,  but  which  seldom 
proves  effective.  In  this  case  it  aligned  the  New  Eng- 
land fishermen  to  a  man  with  the  Revolutionists.  A  Tory 
fisherman  would  have  fared  as  hard  as 

"Old  Floyd  Ireson  for  his  hard  heart 
Tarr'd  and  feathered  and  carried  in  a  cart, 
By  the  woman  of  Marblehead." 

Nor  was  this  any  inconsiderable  or  puny  element 
which  Lord  North  had  deliberately  forced  into  revolt. 
Massachusetts  alone  had  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution 
five  hundred  fishing  vessels,  and  the  town  of  Marblehead 
one  hundred  and  fifty  sea-going  fishing  schooners. 
Gloucester  had  nearly  as  many,  and  all  along  the  coast, 


308  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

from  Maine  to  New  York,  there  were  thrifty  settlers, 
farmers  and  fishermen,  by  turns,  as  the  season  served. 
New  England  was  preeminently  a  maritime  state.  Its 
people  had  early  discovered  that  a  livelihood  could  more 
easily  be  plucked  from  the  green  surges  of  ocean,  white- 
capped  as  they  sometimes  were,  than  wrested  from  the 
green  and  boulder-crowned  hills.  Upon  the  fisheries 
rested  practically  all  the  foreign  commerce.  They  were 
the  foundation  upon  which  were  built  the  superstructure 
of  comfort  and  even  luxury,  the  evidences  of  which  are 
impressive  even  in  the  richer  New  England  of  to-day. 
Therefore,  when  the  British  ministry  attacked  this  call- 
ing, it  roused  against  the  crown  not  merely  the  fisherman 
and  the  sailor,  but  the  merchants  as  well — not  only  the 
denizens  of  the  stuffy  forecastles  of  pinks  and  schooners, 
but  the  owners  of  the  fair  great  houses  in  Boston  and 
New  Bedford.  Lord  North's  edicts  stopped  some  thou- 
sands of  sturdy  sailors  from  catching  cod  and  selling  them 
to  foreign  peoples.  They  accordingly  became  privateers, 
and  preyed  upon  British  commerce  until  it  became  easier 
for  a  mackerel  to  slip  through  the  meshes  of  a  seine  than 
for  a  British  ship  to  make  its  usual  voyages.  The  edicts 
touched  the  commercial  Bostonians  in  their  pockets,  and 
stimulated  them  to  give  to  the  Revolution  that  countenance 
and  support  of  the  "business  classes"  which  revolutionary 
movements  are  apt  to  lack,  and  lacking  which,  are  apt 
to  fail. 

The  war,  of  course,  left  the  fisheries  crippled  and  al- 
most destroyed.  It  had  been  a  struggle  between  the 
greatest  naval  power  of  the  world,  and  a  loose  coalition 
of  independent  colonies,  without  a  navy  and  without  a 
centralized  power  to  build  and  maintain  one.  Massa- 
chusetts did,  indeed,  equip  an  armed  ship  to  protect  her 
fishermen,  but  partly  because  the  protection  was  inade- 


MERCHANT   MARINE  309 

quate,  and  partly  as  a  result  of  the  superior  attractions 
of  privateering,  the  fishing  boats  were  gradually  laid  up, 
until  scarcely  enough  remained  in  commission  to  supply 
the  demands  of  the  home  merchant  for  fish.  Where  there 
had  been  prosperity  and  bustle  about  wharves,  and  fish- 
houses,  there  succeeded  idleness  and  squalor.  Ship- 
building was  prostrate,  commerce  was  dead.  The  sailors 
returned  to  the  farms,  shipped  on  the  privateers,  or  went 
into  Washington's  army.  But  when  peace  was  declared, 
they  flocked  to  their  boats,  and  began  to  rebuild  their 
shattered  industry.  Marblehead,  which  went  into  the 
war  with  12,000  tons  of  shipping,  came  out  with  1500. 
Her  able-bodied  male  citizens  had  decreased  in  numbers 
from  1200  to  500.  Six  hundred  of  her  sons,  used  to 
hauling  the  seine  and  baiting  the  trawl,  were  in  British 
prisons.  How  many  from  this  and  other  fishing  ports 
were  pressed  against  their  will  into  service  on  British 
men-of-war,  history  has  no  figures  to  show;  but  there 
were  hundreds.  Yet,  prostrate  as  the  industry  was,  it 
quickly  revived,  and  soon  again  attained  those  noble  pro- 
portions that  had  enabled  Edmund  Burke  to  say  of  it,  in 
defending  the  colonies  before  the  House  of  Commons : 

"No  ocean  but  what  is  vexed  with  their  fisheries ;  no 
climate  that  is  not  witness  of  their  toils.  Neither  the 
perseverance  of  Holland,  nor  the  activity  of  France,  nor 
the  dextrous  and  firm  sagacity  of  English  enterprise  ever 
carried  this  perilous  mode  of  hardy  enterprise  to  the  ex- 
tent to  which  it  has  been  pushed  by  this  recent  people — a 
people  who  are  still,  as  it  were,  in  the  gristle,  and  not  yet 
hardened  into  the  bone  of  manhood." 

In  1789,  immediately  upon  the  formation  of  the  Gov- 
ernment under  which  we  now  live,  the  system  of  giving 
bounties  to  the  deep-sea  fishermen  was  inaugurated  and 
was  continued  down  to  the  middle  of  the  last  century, 


310  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

when  a  treaty  with  England  led  to  its  discontinuance. 
The  wisest  statesmen  and  publicists  differ  sharply  con- 
cerning the  effect  of  bounties  and  special  governmental 
favors,  like  tariffs  and  rebates,  upon  the  favored  industry, 
and  so,  as  long  as  the  fishing  bounty  was  continued,  its 
needfulness  was  sharply  questioned  by  one  school,  while 
ever  since  its  withdrawal  the  opposing  school  has  ascribed 
to  that  act  all  the  later  ills  of  the  industry.  Indeed,  as 
this  chapter  is  being  written,  a  subsidy  measure  before 
Congress  for  the  encouragement  of  American  shipping, 
contains  a  proviso  for  a  direct  payment  from  the  national 
treasury  to  fishing  vessels,  proportioned  to  their  size  and 
the  numbers  of  their  crews.  It  is  not  my  purpose  to 
discuss  the  merits,  either  of  the  measure  now  pending, 
or  of  the  many  which  have,  from  time  to  time,  encouraged 
or  depressed  our  fishermen.  It  would  be  hard,  however, 
for  any  one  to  read  the  history  of  the  fisheries  without 
being  impressed  by  the  fact  that  the  hardy  and  gallant 
men  who  have  risked  their  lives  in  this  most  arduous  of 
pursuits,  have  suffered  from  too  much  government,  often 
being  sorely  injured  by  a  measure  intended  solely  for  their 
good,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Treaty  of  1818.  That  instru- 
ment was  negotiated  for  the  purpose  of  maintaining  the 
rights  of  American  fishermen  on  the  banks  off  Newfound- 
land, Labrador,  and  Nova  Scotia.  The  American  com- 
missioners failed  to  insist  upon  the  right  of  the  fishermen 
to  land  for  bait,  and  this  omission,  together  with  an 
ambiguity  in  defining  the  "three-mile  limit,"  enabled  the 
British  government  to  harass,  harry,  and  even  confiscate 
American  fishermen  for  years.  American  fleets  were 
sent  into  the  disputed  waters,  and  two  nations  were 
brought  to  the  point  of  war  over  the  question  which 
should  control  the  taking  of  fish  in  waters  that  be- 
longed to  neither,  and  that  held  more  than  enough  for  all 


MERCHANT  MARINE  311 

peoples.  To  settle  the  dispute  the  United  States  finally 
entered  into  another  treaty  which  secured  the  fishermen 
the  rights  ignored  in  the  treaty  of  1818,  but  threw  Ameri- 
can markets  open  to  Canadian  fishermen.  This  the  men 
of  Gloucester  and  Marblehead,  nurtured  in  the  school  of 
protection,  declared  made  their  last  state  worse  than  the 
first.  So  the  tinkering  of  statutes  and  treaties  went  on, 
even  to  the  present  day,  the  fisheries  languishing  mean- 
while, not  in  our  country  alone,  but  in  all  engaged  in  the 
effort  to  get  special  privileges  on  the  fishing  grounds. 
Whenever  man  tries  thus  to  monopolize,  by  sharp  practise 
or  exclusive  laws,  the  bounty  which  God  has  provided  in 
abundance  for  all,  the  end  is  confusion,  distress,  disaster, 
and  too  often  war. 

But  the  story  of  what  the  politicians,  and  those  post- 
graduates of  politics,  the  statesmen,  have  done  for  and 
against  the  fishermen  of  New  England,  is  not  that  which 
I  have  to  tell.  Rather,  it  is  my  purpose  to  tell  something 
of  the  lives  of  the  fishermen,  the  style  of  their  vessels,  the 
portions  of  the  rolling  Atlantic  which  they  visit  in  search 
of  their  prey,  their  dire  perils,  their  rough  pleasures,  and 
their  puny  profits.  First,  then,  as  to  their  prey,  and  its 
haunts. 

The  New  England  fishermen,  in  the  main,  seek  three 
sorts  of  fish — the  mackerel,  the  cod,  and  the  halibut. 
These  they  find  on  the  shallow  banks  which  border  the 
coast  from  the  southern  end  of  Delaware  to  the  very  en- 
trance of  Baffin's  Bay.  The  mackerel  is  a  summer  fish, 
coming  and  going  with  the  regularity  of  the  equinoxes 
themselves.  Early  in  March,  they  appear  off  the  coast, 
and  all  summer  work  their  way  northward,  until,  in  early 
November,  they  disappear  off  the  coast  of  Labrador,  as 
suddenly  as  though  some  titanic  seine  had  swept  the  ocean 
clear  of  them.  What  becomes  of  the  mackerel  in  winter, 


312  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

neither  the  inquisitive  fisherman  nor  the  investigating 
scientist  has  ever  been  able  to  determine.  They  do  not, 
like  migratory  birds,  reappear  in  more  temperate  southern 
climes,  but  vanish  utterly  from  sight.  Eight  months, 
therefore,  is  the  term  of  the  mackerel  fishing,  and  the 
men  engaged  in  it  escape  the  bitterest  rigors  of  the 
winter  fisheries  on  the  Newfoundland  Banks,  where  the 
cod  is  taken  from  January  to  January.  Yet  it  has  dan- 
gers of  its  own — dangers  of  a  sort  that,  to  the  sailor,  are 
more  menacing  than  the  icebergs  or  even  the  swift- 
rushing  ocean  liners  of  the  Great  Banks.  For  mack- 
erel fishing  is  pursued  close  in  shore,  in  shallow  water, 
where  the  sand  lies  a  scant  two  fathoms  below  the  surface, 
and  a  north-east  wind  will,  in  a  few  minutes,  raise  a  roar- 
ing sea  that  will  pound  the  stoutest  vessel  to  bits  against 
the  bottom.  With  plenty  of  sea-room,  and  water  enough 
under  the  keel,  the  sailor  cares  little  for  wind  or  waves  ; 
but  in  the  shallows,  with  the  beacfi  only  a  few  miles  to 
the  leeward,  and  the  breakers  showing  white  through  the 
darkness,  like  the  fangs  of  a  beast  of  prey,  the  captain  of 
a  fishing  schooner  on  George's  banks  has  need  of  every 
resource  of  the  sailor,  if  he  is  to  beat  his  way  off,  and  not 
feed  the  fishes  that  he  came  to  take.  Nowhere  is  the 
barometer  watched  more  carefully  than  on  the  boats  cruis- 
ing about  on  George's.  When  its  warning  column  falls, 
the  whole  fleet  makes  for  the  open  sea,  However  good  the 
fishing  may  be.  But,  with  all  possible  caution,  the  losses 
are  so  many  that  George's,  early  in  its  history,  came  to 
have  the  ghoulish  nickname  of  "Dead  Men's  Bank." 

North  of  George's  Bank — which  lies  directly  east  of 
Cape  Cod — are  found,  in  order,  Brown's  Bank,  La  Have, 
Western  Bank— in  the  center  of  which  lies  Sable  Island, 
famed  as  an  ocean  graveyard,  whose  shifting  sands  are  as 
thickly  strewn  with  the  bleaching  ribs  of  stout  ships  as  an 


MERCHANT  MARINE  313 

old  green  churchyard  is  set  with  mossy  marbles — St. 
Peter's  Bank,  and  the  Grand  Bank  of  Newfoundland. 
All  of  these  lie  further  out  to  sea  than  George's,  and  are 
tenanted  only  by  cod  and  halibut,  though  in  the  waters 
near  the  shore  the  fishermen  pursue  the  mackerel,  the 
herring — which,  in  cottonseed  oil  masquerades  as  Ameri- 
can sardines — and  the  menhaden,  used  chiefly  for  fertil- 
izer. The  boats  used  in  the  fisheries  are  virtually  of  the 
same  model,  whatever  the  fish  they  may  seek — except  in 
the  case  of  the  menhaden  fishery,  which  more  and 
more  is  being  prosecuted  in  slow-going  steamers,  with 
machines  for  hauling  seines,  and  trawl  nets.  But  the 
typical  fishing  boat  engaged  in  the  food  fisheries  is  a  trim, 
swift  schooner,  built  almost  on  the  lines  of  a  yacht,  and 
modeled  after  a  type  designed  by  Edward  Burgess,  one 
of  New  England's  most  famous  yacht  designers.  Sea- 
worthy and  speedy  both  are  these  fishing  boats  of  to-day, 
fit  almost  to  sail  for  the  "America's"  cup,  modeled,  as  they 
are,  from  a  craft  built  by  the  designer  of  a  successful  cup 
defender.  That  the  fishermen  ply  their  calling  in  vessels 
so  perfectly  fitted  to  their  needs  is  due  to  a  notable  exhibi- 
tion of  common  sense  and  enterprise  on  the  part  of  the 
United  States  Fish  Commission.  Some  years  ago  almost 
anything  that  would  float  was  thought  good  enough  for 
the  bank  fishermen.  In  the  earliest  days  of  the  industry, 
small  sloops  were  used.  These  gave  way  to  the  "Che- 
bacco  boat,"  a  boa't  taking  its  name  from  the  town  of 
CheHacco,  Massachusetts,  where  its  rig  was  first  tested. 
This  was  a  fifteen  to  twenty  ton  boat  almost  as  sharp  at  the 
stern  as  in  the  bow,  carrying  two  masts,  both  cat-rigged. 
A  perfect  marvel  of  crankiness  a  boat  so  rigged  would 
seem ;  but  the  New  England  seamen  became  so  expert  in 
handling  them  that  they  took  them  to  all  of  the  fishing 
banks,  and  even  made  cruises  to  the  West  Indies  with 


THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

cargoes  of  fish,  bringing  back  molasses  and  rum.  A  de- 
velopment of  the  Chebacco  boat  was  the  pink,  differing 
only  in  its  rig,  which  was  of  the  schooner  model.  But 
in  time  the  regular  schooner  crowded  out  all  other  types 
of  fishing  vessels.  In  1882,  the  members  of  the  Fish 
Commission,  studying  the  frightful  record  of  wrecks  and 


ON  THE  BANKS 

drownings  among  the  Gloucester  and  Marblehead  fisher- 
men, reached  the  conclusion  that  an  improved  model  fish- 
ing boat  might  be  the  means  of  saving  scores  of  lives. 
The  old  model  was  seen  to  be  too  heavily  rigged,  with  too 
square  a  counter,  and  insufficient  draught.  Accordingly, 
a  model  boat,  the  "Grampus,"  was  designed,  the  style  of 


MERCHANT  MARINE  315 

which  has  been  pretty  generally  followed  in  the  fishing 
fleet. 

Such  a  typical  craft  is  a  schooner  of  about  eighty  tons, 
clean-cut  about  the  bows,  and  with  a  long  overhang  at  the 
stern  that  would  give  her  a  rakish,  yacht-like  air,  except 
for  the  evidences  of  her  trade,  with  which  her  deck  is 
piled.  Her  hull  is  of  the  cutter  model,  sharp  and  deep, 
affording  ample  storage  room.  She  has  a  cabin  aft,  and 
a  roomy  forecastle,  though  such  are  the  democratic  con- 
ditions of  the  fishing  trade  that  part  of  the  crew  bunks 
aft  with  the  skipper.  The  galley,  a  little  box  of  a  place, 
is  directly  abaft  the  foremast,  and  back  of  it  to  the  cabin, 
are  the  fishbins  for  storing  fish,  after  they  are  cleaned 
and  salted  or  iced.  Nowadays,  when  the  great  cities, 
within  a  few  hours'  sail  of  the  banks,  offer  a  quick  market 
for  fresh  fish,  many  of  the  fishing  boats  bring  in  their 
catch  alive — a  deep  well,  always  filled  with  sea-water, 
taking  the  place  of  the  fishbins.  The  deck,  forward  of 
the  trunk  cabin,  is  flush,  and  provided  with  "knockdown" 
partitions,  so  that  hundreds  of  flapping  fish  may  be  con- 
fined to  any  desired  portion.  Amidships  of  the  bankers 
rises  a  pile  of  five  or  six  dories,  the  presence  of  which 
tells  the  story  of  the  schooner's  purpose,  for  fishing  on 
the  Grand  Banks  for  cod  is  mainly  done  with  trawls  which 
must  be  tended  from  dories — a  method  which  has  resulted 
in  countless  cruel  tragedies. 

The  lives  of  the  men  who  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships 
are  always  full  of  romance,  the  literary  value  of  which 
has  been  fully  exploited  by  such  writers  of  sea  stories 
as  Cooper  and  Clark  Russell.  But  the  romance  of  the 
typical  sailor's  life  is  that  which  grows  out  of  a  ceaseless 
struggle  with  the  winds  and  waves,  out  of  world-wide 
wanderings,  and  encounters  with  savages  and  pirates.  It 
is  the  romance  which  makes  up  melodrama,  rather  than 


316  THE  STORY   OF   OUR 

that  of  the  normal  life.  The  early  New  England  fisher- 
men, however,  were  something  more  than  vagrants  on  the 
surface  of  the  seas.  In  their  lives  were  often  combined 
the  peacful  vocations  of  the  farmer  or  woodsman,  with 
the  adventurous  calling  of  the  sailor.  For  months  out 
of  the  year,  the  Maine  fisherman  would  be  working  in 
the  forests,  felling  great  trees,  guiding  the  tugging  ox- 
teams  to  the  frozen  rivers,  which  with  spring  would  float 
the  timber  down  to  tidewater.  When  winter's  grip  was 
loosened,  he,  like  the  sturdy  logs  his  axe  had  shaped, 
would  find  his  way  to  where  the  air  was  full  of  salt,  and 
the  owners  of  pinks  and  schooners  were  painting  their 
craft,  running  over  the  rigging,  and  bargaining  with 
the  outfitters  for  stores  for  the  spring  cruise.  From 
Massachusetts  and  Rhode  Island  farms  men  would  flock 
to  the  little  ports,  leaving  behind  the  wife  and  younger 
boys  to  take  care  of  the  homestead,  until  the  husband  and 
father  returned  from  the  banks  in  the  fall,  with  his  sum- 
mer's earnings.  His  luck  at  fishing,  her  luck  with  corn 
and  calves  and  pigs,  determined  the  scale  of  the  winter's 
living.  Some  of  the  fishermen  were  not  only  farmers, 
as  well,  but  ship-builders  and  ship-owners,  too.  If  the 
farm  happened  to  front  on  some  little  cove,  the  frame  of  a 
schooner  would  be  set  up  there  on  the  beach,  and  all  win- 
ter long  the  fisherman-farmer-builder  would  work  away 
with  adze  and  saw  and  hammer,  putting  together  the 
stout  hull  that  would  defend  him  in  time  against  the  shock 
of  the  north-east  sea.  His  own  forest  land  supplied  the 
oak  trees,  keelson,  ribs,  and  stem.  The  neighboring  saw- 
mill shaped  his  planks.  One  lucky  cruise  as  a  hand  on 
a  fishing  boat  owned  by  a  friend  would  earn  him  enough 
to  pay  for  the  paint  and  cordage.  With  Yankee  ingenuity 
he  shaped  the  iron  work  at  his  own  forge — evading  in 
its  time  the  stupid  British  law  that  forbade  the  colonists 


MERCHANT  MARINE  317 

to  make  nails  or  bolts.  Two  winters'  labor  would  often 
give  the  thrifty  builder  a  staunch  "boat  of  his  own,  to  be 
christened  the  "Polly  Ann/'  or  the  "Mary  Jane" — more 
loyal  to  family  ties  than  to  poetic  euphony  were  the  Yan- 
kee fishermen — with  which  he  would  drive  into  the  teeth 
of  the  north-east  gale,  breaking  through  the  waves  as 
calmly  as  in  early  spring  at  home  he  forced  his  plough 
through  the  stubble. 

There  was,  too,  in  those  early  days  of  the  fisheries,  a 
certain  patriarchal  relation  maintained  between  owner 
and  crew  that  finds  no  parallel  in  modern  times.  The 
first  step  upward  of  the  fisherman  was  to  the  quarter-deck. 
As  captain,  he  had  a  larger  responsibility,  and  received 
a  somewhat  larger  share  of  the  catch,  than  any  of  his 
crew.  Then,  if  thrifty,  or  if  possessed  of  a  shipyard  at 
home,  such  as  I  have  described,  he  soon  became  an  owner. 
In  time,  perhaps,  he  would  add  one  or  two  schooners  to 
his  fleet,  and  then  stay  ashore  as  owner  and  outfitter, 
sending  out  his  boats  on  shares.  Fishermen  who  had  at- 
tained to  this  dignity,  built  those  fine,  old,  great  houses, 
which  we  see  on  the  water-front  in  some  parts  of  New 
England — square,  simple,  shingled  to  the  ground,  a  deck 
perched  on  the  ridge-pole  of  the  hipped  roof,  the  frame 
built  of  oak  shaped  like  a  ship's  timbers,  with  axe  and 
adze.  The  lawns  before  the  houses  sloped  down  to  the 
water  where,  in  the  days  of  the  old  prosperity,  the  owner's 
schooner  might  be  seen,  resting  lightly  at  anchor,  or  tied 
up  to  one  of  the  long,  frail  wharves,  discharging  cargo — 
wharves  black  and  rotting  now,  and  long  unused  to  the 
sailor's  cherry  cry.  There,  too,  would  be  the  flakes  for 
drying  fish,  the  houses  on  the  wharves  for  storing  sup- 
plies, and  the  packed  product,  and  the  little  store  in  which 
the  outfitter  kept  the  simple  stock  of  necessaries  from 
which  all  who  shipped  on  his  fleet  were  welcome  to  draw 


3i8  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

for  themselves  and  their  families,  until  their  "ship  came 
in."  To  such  a  fishing  port  would  flock  the  men  from 
farm  and  forest,  as  the  season  for  mackerel  drew  nigh. 
The  first  order  at  the  store  would  include  a  pair  of  buck 
(red  leather)  or  rubber  boots,  ten  or  fifteen  pounds  of 
tobacco,  clay  pipe,  sou'- westers,  a  jack-knife,  and  oil- 
clothes.  If  the  sailor  was  single,  the  account  would  stop 
there,  until  his  schooner  came  back  to  port.  If  he  had  a 
family,  a  long  list  of  groceries,  pork  and  beans,  molasses, 
coffee,  flour,  and  coarse  cloth,  would  be  bought  on  credit, 
for  the  folks  at  home.  It  came  about  naturally  that  these 
folks  preferred  to  be  near  the  store  at  which  the  family 
had  credit,  and  so  the  sailors  would,  in  time,  buy  little 
plots  of  land  in  the  neighborhood,  and  build  thereon  their 
snug  shingled  cottages.  So  sprung  up  the  fishing  vil- 
lages of  New  England. 

The  boys  who  grew  up  in  these  villages  were  able  to 
swim  as  soon  as  they  could  walk ;  rowed  and  sailed  boats 
before  they  could  guide  a  plow;  could  give  the  location 
of  every  bank,  the  sort  of  fish  that  frequented  it,  and  the 
season  for  taking  them.  They  could  name  every  rope 
and  clew,  every  brace  and  stay  on  a  pink  or  Chebacco 
boat  before  they  reached  words  of  two  syllables  in  Web- 
ster's blue-backed  spelling-book ;  the  mysteries  of  trawls 
and  handlines,  of  baits  and  hooks  were  unraveled  to  them 
while  still  in  the  nursery,  and  the  songs  that  lulled  them 
to  sleep  were  often  doleful  ditties  of  castaways  on 
George's  Bank.  Often  they  were  shipped  as  early  as 
their  tenth  year,  going  as  a  rule  in  schooners  owned  or 
commanded  by  relatives.  It  was  no  easy  life  that  the 
youngster  entered  upon  when  first  he  attained  the  dignity 
of  being  a  "cut-tail,"  but  such  as  it  was,  it  was  the  life  he 
had  looked  forward  to  ever  since  he  was  old  enough  to 
consider  the  future.  He  lived  in  a  little  forecastle,  heated 


MERCHANT  MARINE  319 

by  a  stuffy  stove,  which  it  was  his  business  to  keep  sup- 
plied with  fuel.  The  bunks  on  either  side  held  rough 
men,  not  over  nice  of  language  or  of  act,  smoking  and 
playing  cards  through  most  of  their  hours  of  leisure. 
From  time  immemorial  it  has  been  a  maxim  of  the  fore- 
castle that  the  way  to  educate  a  boy  is  to  "harden"  him, 
and  the  hardening  process  has  usually  taken  the  form  of 
persistent  brutality  of  usage — the  rope's  end,  the  heavy 
hand,  the  hard-flung  boot  followed  swift  upon  transgres- 
sion of  the  laws  or  customs  of  ship  or  forecastle.  The 
"cut-tail"  was  everybody's  drudge,  yet  gloried  in  it,  and 
a  boy  of  Gloucester  or  Marblehead,  who  had  lived  his 
twelve  years  without  at  least  one  voyage  to  his  credit,  was 
in  as  sorry  a  state  among  his  fellow  urchins  as  a  "Little 
Lord  Fauntleroy"  would  be  in  the  company  of  Tom 
Sawyer  and  Huckleberry  Finn. 

The  intimacies  of  the  village  streets  were  continued 
on  the  ocean.  Fish  supplanted  marbles  as  objects  of 
prime  importance  in  the  urchin's  mind.  The  smallest 
fishing  village  would  have  two  or  three  boats  out  on  the 
banks,  and  the  larger  town  several  hundred.  Between 
the  crews  of  these  vessels  existed  always  the  keenest 
rivalry,  which  had  abundant  opportunity  for  its  exhibition, 
since  the  conditions  of  the  fishery  were  such  that  the 
schooners  cruised  for  weeks,  perhaps,  in  fleets  of  several 
hundred.  Every  maneuver  was  made  under  the  eyes  of 
the  whole  fleet,  and  each  captain  and  sailor  felt  that 
among  the  critics  were  probably  some  of  his  near  neigh- 
bors at  home.  Charles  Nordhoff,  who  followed  a  youth 
spent  at  sea  with  a  long  life  of  honorable  and  brilliant 
activity  in  journalism,  describes  the  watchfulness  of  the 
fleet  as  he  had  often  seen  it : 

"The  fleet  is  the  aggregate  of  all  the  vessels  engaged 
in  the  mackerel  fishery.  Experience  has  taught  fisher- 


320  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

men  that  the  surest  way  to  find  mackerel  is  to  cruise  in 
one  vast  body,  whose  line  of  search  will  then  extend  over 
an  area  of  many  miles.  When,  as  sometimes  happens,  a 
single  vessel  falls  in  with  a  large  'school/  the  catch  is,  of 
course,  much  greater.  But  vessels  cruising  separately 
or  in  small  squads  are  much  less  likely  to  fall  in  with  fish 
than  is  the  large  fleet.  'The  fleet*  is  therefore  the  aim  of 
every  mackerel  fisherman.  The  best  vessels  generally 
maintain  a  position  to  the  windward.  Mackerel  mostly 
work  to  windward  slowly,  and  those  vessels  furthest  to 
windward  in  the  fleet  are  therefore  most  likely  to  fall  in 
with  fish  first,  while  from  their  position  they  can  quickly 
run  down  should  mackerel  be  raised  to  leeward. 

"Thus,  in  a  collection  of  from  six  hundred  to  a  thou- 
sand vessels,  cruising  in  one  vast  body,  and  spreading 
over  many  miles  of  water,  is  kept  up  a  constant,  though 
silent  and  imperceptible  communication,  by  means  of 
incessant  watching  with  good  spy-glasses.  This  is  so 
thorough  that  a  vessel  at  one  end  of  the  fleet  cannot  have 
mackerel  'alongside/  technically  speaking,  five  minutes, 
before  every  vessel  in  a  circle,  the  diameter  of  which  may 
be  ten  miles,  will  be  aware  of  the  fact,  and  every  man  of 
the  ten  thousand  composing  their  crews  will  be  engaged 
in  spreading  to  the  wind  every  available  stitch  of  canvas 
to  force  each  little  bark  as  quickly  as  possible  into  close 
proximity  to  the  coveted  prize." 

To  come  upon  the  mackerel  fleet  suddenly,  perhaps 
with  the  lifting  of  the  fog's  gray  curtain,  or  just  as  the 
faint  dawn  above  the  tossing  horizon  line  to  the  east  began 
to  drive  away  the  dark,  was  a  sight  to  stir  the  blood  of  a 
lad  born  to  the  sea.  Sometimes  nearly  a  thousand  vessels 
would  be  huddled  together  in  a  space  hardly  more  than 
a  mile  square.  At  night,  their  red  and  green  lights  would 
swing  rhythmically  up  and  down  as  the  little  craft  were 


MERCHANT  MARINE  321 

tossed  by  the  long  rollers  of  old  Atlantic,  in  whose  black 
bosom  the  gay  colors  were  reflected  in  subdued  hues. 
From  this  floating  city,  with  a  population  of  perhaps  ten 
thousand  souls,  no  sound  arises  except  the  occasional  roar 
of  a  breaking  swell,  the  creaking  of  cordage,  and  the 
"chug-chug"  of  the  vessel's  bows  as  they  drop  into  the 
trough  of  the  sea.  All  sails  are  furled,  the  bare  poles 
showing  black  against  the  starlit  sky,  and,  with  one  man 
on  watch  on  the  deck,  each  drifts  idly  before  the  breeze. 
Below,  in  stuffy  cabins  and  fetid  forecastles,  the  men  are 
sleeping  the  deep  and  dreamless  sleep  ,that  hard  work  in 
the  open  air  brings  as  one  of  its  rewards.  All  is  as  quiet 
as  though  a  mystic  spell  were  laid  on  all  the  fleet.  But 
when  the  sky  to  the  eastward  begins  to  turn  gray,  signs  of 
life  reappear.  Here  and  there  in  the  fleet  a  sail  will  be 
seen  climbing  jerkily  to  the  masthead,  and  hoarse  voices 
sound  across  the  waters.  It  is  only  a  minute  or  two  after 
the  first  evidence  of  activity  before  the  whole  fleet  is 
tensely  active.  Blocks  and  cordage  are  creaking,  cap- 
tains and  mates  shouting.  Where  there  was  a  forest  of 
bare  poles  are  soon  hundreds  of  jibs  and  mainsails,  rosy 
in  the  first  rays  of  the  rising  sun.  The  schooners  that 
have  been  drifting  idly,  are,  as  by  magic,  under  weigh, 
cutting  across  each  other's  bows,  slipping  out  of  menacing 
entanglements,  avoiding  collisions  by  a  series  of  nautical 
miracles.  From  a  thousand  galleys  rise  a  thousand  slen- 
der wreaths  of  smoke,  and  the  odors  of  coffee  and  of  the 
bean  dear  to  New  England  fishermen,  mingle  with  the 
saline  zephyrs  of  the  sea.  The  fleet  is  awake. 

They  who  have  sailed  with  the  fleet  say  that  one  of 
the  marvels  of  the  fisherman's  mind  is  the  unerring  skill 
with  which  he  will  identify  vessels  in  the  distant  fleet. 
To  the  landsman  all  are  alike — a  group  of  somewhat 
dingy  schooners,  not  over  trig,  and  apt  to  be  in  need  of 


322 


THE   STORY    OF    OUR 


paint.  But  the  trained  fisherman,  pursing  his  eyes 
against  the  sun's  glitter  on  the  waves,  points  them  out  one 
by  one,  with  names,  port-of-hail,  name  of  captain,  and 
bits  of  gossip  about  the  craft.  As  the  mountaineer  identi- 
fies the  most  distant  peak,  or  the  plainsman  picks  his  way 
by  the  trail  indistinguishable  to  the  untrained  eye,  so  the 
fisherman,  raised  from  boyhood  among  the  vessels  that 
make  up  the  fleet,  finds  in  each  characteristics  so  striking, 
so  individual,  as  to  identify  the  vessel  displaying  them  as 
far  as  a  keen  eye  can  reach. 

The  fishing  schooners,  like  the  whalers,  were  man- 


"THE  BOYS  MARKED  THEIB  FISH  BY  CUTTING  OFF  THEIE  TAILS" 

aged  upon  principles  of  profit-sharing.  The  methods  of 
dividing  the  proceeds  of  the  catch  differed,  but  in  no  sense 
did  the  wage  system  exist,  except  for  one  man  on  board — 
the  cook,  who  was  paid  from  $40  to  $60  a  month,  besides 
being  allowed  to  fish  in  return  for  caring  for  the  vessel 
when  all  the  men  were  out  in  dories.  Sometimes  the 
gross  catch  of  the  boat  was  divided  into  two  parts,  the 
owners  who  outfitted  the  boat,  supplying  all  provisions, 
equipment,  and  salt,  taking  one  part,  the  other  being  di- 
vided among  the  fishermen  in  proportion  to  the  catch  of 
each.  Every  fish  caught  was  carefully  tallied,  the  cus- 


MERCHANT  MARINE  323 

ternary  method  being  to  cut  the  tongues,  which  at  the 
close  of  the  day's  work  were  counted  by  the  captain,  and 
each  man's  catch  credited.  The  boys,  of  whom  each 
schooner  carried  one  or  two,  marked  their  fish  by  cutting 
off  the  tails,  wherefore  these  hardy  urchins,  who  generally 
took  the  sea  at  the  age  of  ten,  were  called  "cut-tails." 
The  captain,  for  his  more  responsible  part  in  the  man- 
agement of  the  boat,  was  not  always  expected  to  keep 
tally  of  his  fish,  but  was  allowed  an  average  catch,  plus 
from  three  to  five  per  cent,  of  the  gross  value  of  the  cargo. 
Not  infrequently  the  captain  was  owner  of  the  boat,  and 
his  crew,  thrifty  neighbors  of  his,  owning  their  own 
houses  by  the  waterside,  and  able  to  outfit  the  craft  and 
provide  for  the  sustenance  of  their  wives  and  children  at 
home  without  calling  upon  the  capitalist  for  aid.  In  such 
a  case,  the  whole  value  of  the  catch  was  divided  among 
the  men  who  made  it.  At  best,  these  shares  were  not  of 
a  sort  to  open  the  doors  of  a  financial  paradise  to  the  men. 
The  fisheries  have  always  afforded  impressive  illustrations 
of  the  iron  rule  of  the  business  world  that  the  more  ardu- 
ous and  more  dangerous  an  occupation  is,  the  less  it  pays. 
It  was  for  the  merest  pittance  that  the  fishermen  risked 
their  lives,  and  those  who  had  families  at  home  drawing 
their  weekly  provender  from  the  outfitter  were  lucky  if, 
at  the  end  of  the  cruise  they  found  themselves  with  the 
bill  at  the  store  paid,  and  a  few  dollars  over  for  neces- 
saries during  the  winter.  In  1799,  when  the  spokesmen 
of  the  fishery  interests  appeared  before  Congress  to  plead 
for  aid,  they  brought  papers  from  the  town  of  Marble- 
head  showing  that  the  average  earnings  of  the  fishing  ves- 
sels hailing  from  that  port  were,  in  1787,  $483;  in  1788, 
$456;  and  in  1789,  $273.  The  expenses  of  each  vessel 
averaged  $275.  In  the  best  of  the  three  years,  then,  there 
was  a  scant  $200  to  be  divided  among  the  captain,  the 


324  THE  STORY   OF   OUR 

crew,  and  the  owner.  This  was,  of  course,  one  of  the 
leanest  of  the  lean  years  that  the  fishermen  encountered ; 
but  with  all  the  encouragement  in  the  way  of  bounties  and 
protected  markets  that  Congress  could  give  them,  they 
never  were  able  to  earn  in  a  life,  as  much  as  a  successful 
promoter  of  trusts  nowadays  will  make  in  half  an  hour. 
In  1917  the  New  England  fishing  fleet  numbered  512 
vessels.  In  the  midst  of  war-time  distractions  it  was 
sorely  handicapped  by  lack  of  men,  for  while  in  ordinary 
years  an  average  of  about  135,000  men  followed  this 
calling,  it  was  difficult  at  this  period  to  find  two-thirds 
of  this  number.  The  argument  for  the  encouragement 
of  the  fisheries  has  long  been  that  they  furnished  a  school 
for  navy  seamen.  But  when  the  country  came  to  draw 
upon  this  school  it  found  that  reducing  the  number  of 
the  fishermen  quickly  sent  up  the  price  of  fish. 

Mackerel  are  taken  both  with  the  hook  and  in  nets — 
taken  in  such  prodigious  numbers  that  the  dories  which 
go  out  to  draw  the  seine  are  loaded  until  their  gunwales 
are  almost  flush  with  the  sea,  and  each  haul  seems  indeed 
a  miraculous  draught  of  fishes.  It  is  the  safest  and  pleas- 
antest  form  of  fishing  known  to  the  New  Englander,  for 
its  season  is  in  summer  only;  the  most  frequented  banks 
are  out  of  the  foggy  latitude,  and  the  habit  of  the  fish  of 
going  about  in  monster  schools  keeps  the  fishing  fleet  to- 
gether, conducing  thus  to  safety  and  sociability  both.  In 
one  respect,  too,  it  is  the  most  picturesque  form  of  fishing. 
The  mackerel  is  not  unlike  his  enemy,  man,  in  his  curios- 
ity concerning  the  significance  of  a  bright  light  in  the 
dark.  Shrewd  shopkeepers,  who  are  after  gudgeons  of  the 
human  sort,  have  worked  on  this  failing  of  the  human 
family  so  that  by  night  some  of  our  city  streets  blaze  with 
every  variety  of  electric  fire.  The  mackerel  fisherman 


MERCHANT  MARINE  325 

gets  after  his  prey  in  much  the  same  fashion.  When  at 
night  the  lookout  catches  sight  of  the  phosphorescent 
gleams  in  the  water  that  tells  of  the  restless  activity  be- 
neath of  a  great  school  of  fish  the  schooner  is  headed 
straightway  for  the  spot.  Perhaps  forty  or  fifty  other 
schooners  will  be  turning  their  prows  the  same  way,  their 
red  and  green  lights  glimmering  through  the  black  night 
on  either  side,  the  white  waves  under  the  bows  showing 
faintly,  and  the  creaking  of  the  cordage  sounding  over 
the  waters.  It  is  a  race  for  first  chance  at  the  school,  and 
a  race  conducted  with  all  the  dash  and  desperation  of  a 
steeple-chase.  The  skipper  of  each  craft  is  at  his  own 
helm,  roaring  out  orders,  and  eagerly  watchful  of  the 
lights  of  his  encroaching  neighbors.  With  the  schooner 
heeled  over  to  leeward,  and  rushing  along  through  the 
blackness,  the  boats  are  launched,  and  the  men  tumble 
over  the  side  into  them,  until  perhaps  the  cook,  the  boy, 
and  the  skipper  are  alone  on  deck.  One  big  boat,  pro- 
pelled by  ten  stout  oarsmen,  carries  the  seine,  and  with 
one  dory  is  towed  astern  the  schooner  until  the  school  is 
overhauled,  then  casts  off  and  leaps  through  the  water 
under  the  vigorous  tugs  of  its  oarsmen.  In  the  stern  a 
man  stands  throwing  over  the  seine  by  armsful.  It  is  the 
plan  of  campaign  for  the  long  boat  and  the  dory,  each 
carrying  one  end  of  the  net,  to  make  a  circuit  of  the 
school,  and  envelope  as  much  of  it  as  possible  in  the  folds 
of  the  seine.  Perhaps  at  one  time  boats  from  twenty  or 
thirty  schooners  will  be  undertaking  the  same  task,  their 
torches  blazing,  their  helmsmen  shouting,  the  oars  tossing 
phosphorescent  spray  into  the  air.  In  and  out  among  the 
boats  the  schooners  pick  their  way — a  delicate  task,  for 
each  skipper  wishes  to  keep  as  near  as  possible  to  his  men, 
yet  must  run  over  neither  boats  or  nets  belonging  to  his 
rival.  Wonderfully  expert  helmsmen  they  become  after 


326  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

years  of  this  sort  of  work — more  trying  to  the  nerves  and 
exacting  quite  as  much  skill  as  the  "jockeying"  for  place 
at  the  start  of  an  international  yacht  race. 

When  the  slow  task  of  drawing  together  the  ends  of 
the  seine  until  the  fish  are  fairly  enclosed  in  a  sort  of 
marine  canal,  a  signal  brings  the  schooner  down  to  the 
side  of  the  boats.  The  mackerel  are  fairly  trapped,  but 
the  glare  of  the  torches  blinds  them  to  their  situation,  and 
they  would  scarcely  escape  if  they  could.  One  side  of 
the  net  is  taken  up  on  the  schooner's  deck,  and  there 
clamped  firmly,  the  fish  thus  lying  in  the  bunt,  or  pocket 
between  the  schooners,  and  the  two  boats  which  lie  off 
eight  or  ten  feet,  rising  and  falling  with  the  sea.  There, 
huddled  together  in  the  shallow  water,  growing  ever  shal- 
lower as  the  net  is  raised,  the  shining  fish,  hundreds  and 
thousands  of  them,  bushels,  barrels,  hogsheads  of  them, 
flash  and  flap,  as  the  men  prepare  to  swing  them  aboard 
in  the  dip  net.  This  great  pocket  of  cord,  fit  to  hold  per- 
haps a  bushel  or  more,  is  swung  from  the  boom  above, 
and  lowered  into  the  midst  of  the  catch.  Two  men  in 
the  boat  seize  its  iron  rim,  and  with  a  twist  and  shove 
scoop  it  full  of  mackerel.  "Yo-heave-oh"  sing  out  the 
men  at  the  halliards,  and  the  net  rises  into  the  air,  and 
swings  over  the  deck  of  the  schooner.  Two  men  perched 
on  the  rail  seize  the  collar  and,  turning  it  inside  out,  drop 
the  whole  finny  load  upon  the  deck.  "Fine,  fat,  fi-i-ish !" 
cry  out  the  crew  in  unison,  and  the  net  dips  back  again 
into  the  corral  for  another  load.  So,  by  the  light  of 
smoky  torches,  fastened  to  the  rigging,  the  work  goes  on, 
the  men  singing  and  shouting,  the  tackle  creaking,  the 
waves  splashing,  the  wind  singing  in  the  shrouds,  the 
boat's  bow  bumping  dully  on  the  waves  as  she  falls.  To 
all  these  sounds  of  the  sea  comes  soon  to  be  added  one 
that  is  peculiar  to  the  banks,  a  sound  rising  from  the  deck 


MERCHANT  MARINE  327 

of  the  vessel,  a  multitude  of  little  taps,  rhythmical,  muf- 
fled, soft  as  though  a  corps  of  clog-dancers  were  dancing 
a  lively  jig  in  rubber-soled  shoes.  It  is  the  dance  of 
death  of  the  hapless  mackerel.  All  about  the  deck  they 
flap  and  beat  their  little  lives  away.  Scales  fly  in  every 
direction,  and  the  rigging,  almost  to  the  masthead,  is 
plastered  with  them. 

When  the  deck  is  nearly  full — and  sometimes  a  single 
haul  of  the  seine  will  more  than  fill  it  twice — the  labor  of 
clipping  is  interrupted  and  all  hands  turn  to  with  a  will 
to  dress  and  pack  the  fish.  Not  pretty  work,  this,  and 
as  little  pleasing  to  perform.  Barrels;  boards,  and  sharp 
knives  are  in  requisition.  Torches  are  set  up  about  the 
deck.  The  men  divide  up  into  gangs  of  four  each  and 
group  themselves  about  the  "keelers,"  or  square,  shallow 
boxes  into  which  the  fish  to  be  dressed  are  bailed  from 
the  deck.  Two  men  in  each  gang  are  "splitters";  two 
"gibbers."  The  first,  with  a  dextrous  slash  of  a  sharp 
knife  splits  the  fish  down  the  back,  and  throws  it  to  the 
"gibber,"  who,  with  a  twist  of  his  thumb — armed  with  a 
mitt — extracts  the  entrails  and  throws  the  fish  into  a  bar- 
rel of  brine.  By  long  practise  the  men  become  exceedingly 
expert  in  the  work,  and  rivalry  among  the  gangs  keeps 
the  pace  of  all  up  to  the  highest  possible  point.  All 
through  the  night  they  work  until  the  deck  is  cleaned  of 
fish,  and  slimy  with  blood  and  scales.  The  men,  them- 
selves, are  ghastly,  besmeared  as  they  are  from  top  to  toe 
with  the  gore  of  the  mackerel.  From  time  to  time,  full 
barrels  are  rolled  away,  and  lowered  into  the  hold,  and 
fresh  fish  raised  from  the  slowly  emptying  seine  along- 
side. Until  the  last  fish  has  been  sliced,  cleaned,  plunged 
into  brine,  and  packed  away  there  can  be  little  respite 
from  the  muscle  grinding  work.  From  time  to  time,  the 
pail  of  tepid  water  is  passed  about ;  once  at  least  during 


328 


THE   STORY   OF   OUR 


the  night,  the  cook  goes  from  gang  to  gang  with  steam- 
ing coffee,  and  now  and  then  some  man  whose  wrist  is 
wearied  beyond  endurance,  knocks  off,  and  with  contor- 
tions of  pain,  rubs  his  arm  from  wrist  to  elbow.  But  save 
for  these  momentary  interruptions,  there  is  little  break  in 
the  work.  Meanwhile  the  boat  is  plunging  along  through 


FISHING  FROM  THE  BAIL 

the  water,  the  helm  lashed  or  in  beckets,  and  the  skipper 
hard  at  work  with  a  knife  or  gibbing  mitt.  A  score  of 
Other  boats  in  a  radius  of  half  a  mile  or  so,  will  be  in  like 
case,  so  there  is  always  danger  of  collision.  Many  narrow 
escapes  and  not  a  few  accidents  have  resulted  from  the 
practice  of  cleaning  up  while  under  sail. 


MERCHANT  MARINE  329 

The  mackerel,  however,  is  not  caught  solely  in  nets, 
but  readily  takes  that  oldest  of  man's  predatory  instru- 
ments, the  hook.  To  attract  them  to  the  side  of  the  ves- 
sel, a  mixture  of  clams  and  little  fish  called  "porgies," 
ground  together  in  a  mill,  is  thrown  into  the  sea,  which, 
sinking  to  the  depths  at  which  the  fish  commonly  lie, 
attract  them  to  the  surface  and  among  the  enticing  hooks. 
Every  fisherman  handles  two  lines,  and  when  the  fishing 
is  good  he  is  kept  busy  hauling  in  and  striking  off  the 
fish  until  his  arms  ache,  and  the  tough  skin  on  his  hands  is 
nearly  chafed  through.  Sometimes  the  hooks  are  baited 
with  bits  of  clam  or  porgy,  though  usually  the  mackerel, 
when  biting  at  all,  will  snap  with  avidity  at  a  naked  hook, 
if  tinned  so  as  to  shine  in  the  water.  Mr.  Nordhoff,  whose 
reminiscences  of  life  on  a  fishing  boat  I  have  already 
quoted,  describes  this  method  of  fishing  and  its  results 
graphically : 

"At  midnight,  when  I  am  called  up  out  of  my  warm 
bed  to  stand  an  hour's  watch,  I  find  the  vessel  pitching 
uneasily,  and  hear  the  breeze  blowing  fretfully  through 
the  naked  rigging.  Going  on  deck,  I  perceive  that  both 
wind  and  sea  have  'got  up'  since  we  retired  to  rest.  The 
sky  looks  lowering,  and  the  clouds  are  evidently  sur- 
charged with  rain.  In  fine  the  weather,  as  my  predecessor 
on  watch  informs  me,  bears  every  sign  of  an  excellent 
fishday  on  the  morrow.  I  accordingly  grind  some  bait, 
sharpen  up  my  hooks  once  more,  see  my  lines  clear,  and 
my  heaviest  jigs  (the  technical  term  for  hooks  with 
pewter  on  them)  on  the  rail  ready  for  use,  and  at  one 
o'clock  return  to  my  comfortable  bunk.  I  am  soon  again 
asleep,  and  dreaming  of  hearing  fire-bells  ringing,  and 
seeing  men  rush  to  the  fire,  and  just  as  I  see  'the  machine' 
round  the  corner  of  the  street,  am  startled  out  of  my  pro- 
priety, my  dream,  sleep,  and  all  by  the  loud  cry  of  'Fish 


330  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

"I  start  up  desperately  in  my  narrow  bunk,  bringing 
my  cranium  in  volent  contact  with  a  beam  overhead,  which 
has  the  effect  of  knocking  me  flat  down  in  my  berth  again. 
After  recovering  as  much  consciousness  as  is  necessary  to 
appreciate  my  position,  I  roll  out  of  bed,  jerk  savagely  at 
my  boots,  and  snatching  up  my  cap  and  pea-jacket,  make 
a  rush  at  the  companion-way,  up  which  I  manage  to  fall 
in  my  haste,  and  then  spring  into  the  hold  for  a  strike- 
barrel. 

"And  now  the  mainsail  is  up,  the  jib  down,  and  the 
captain  is  throwing  bait.  It  is  not  yet  quite  light,  but  we 
hear  other  mainsails  going  up  all  round  us.  A  cool  driz- 
zle makes  the  morning  unmistakably  uncomfortable,  and 
we  stand  around  half  asleep,  with  our  sore  hands  in  our 
pockets,  wishing  we  were  at  home.  The  skipper,  however, 
is  holding  his  lines  over  the  rail  with  an  air  which  clearly 
intimates  that  the  slightest  kind  of  a  nibble  will  be  quite 
sufficient  this  morning  to  seal  the  doom  of  a  mackerel. 

'  'There,  by  Jove !'  the  captain  hauls  back — 'there,  I 
told  you  so!  Skipper's  got  him — no — aha,  captain,  you 
haul  back  too  savagely !' 

"With  the  first  movement  of  the  captain's  arm,  indi- 
cating the  presence  of  fish,  everybody  rushes  madly  to  the 
rail.  Jigs  are  heard  on  all  sides  plashing  into  the  water, 
and  eager  hands  and  arms  are  stretched  at  their  full 
length  over  the  side,  feeling  anxiously  for  a  nibble. 

"  'Sh — hish — there's  something  just  passed  my  fly — I 
felt  him/  says  an  old  man  standing  alongside  of  me. 

"  'Yes,  and  I've  got  him,'  trumphantly  shouts  out 
the  next  man  on  the  other  side  of  him,  hauling  in  as  he 
speaks,  a  fine  mackerel,  and  striking  him  off  into  his 
barrel  in  the  most  approved  style. 

"Z-z-zip  goes  my  line  through  and  deep  into  my  poor 
fingers,  as  a  huge  mackerel  rushes  savagely  away  with 


MERCHANT  MARINE  331 

what  he  finds  not  so  great  a  prize  as  he  thought  it  was. 
I  get  confoundedly  flurried,  miss  stroke  half  a  dozen 
times  in  hauling  in  as  many  fathoms  of  line,  and  at  length 
succeed  in  landing  my  first  fish  safely  in  my  barrel,  where 
he  flounders  away  'most  melodiously/  as  my  neighbor 
says. 

"And  now  it  is  fairly  daylight,  and  the  rain,  which 
has  been  threatening  all  night,  begins  to  pour  down  in 
right  earnest.  As  the  heavy  drops  patter  on  the  sea  the 
fish  begin  to  bite  fast  and  furiously. 

"  'Shorten  up/  says  the  skipper,  and  we  shorten  in 
our  lines  to  about  eight  feet  from  the  rail  to  the  hooks, 
when  we  can  jerk  them  in  just  as  fast  as  we  can  move  our 
hands  and  arms.  'Keep  your  lines  clear/  is  now  the 
word,  as  the  doomed  fish  slip  faster  and  faster  into  the 
barrels  standing  to  receive  them.  Here  is  one  greedy 
fellow  already  casting  furtive  glances  behind  him,  and 
calculating  in  his  mind  how  many  fish  he  will  have  to 
lose  in  the  operation  of  getting  his  second  strike-barrel. 

"Now  you  hear  no  sound  except  the  steady  flip  of  fish 
into  the  barrels.  Every  face  wears  an  expression  of 
anxious  determination ;  everybody  moves  as  though  by 
springs ;  every  heart  beats  loud  with  excitement,  and 
every  hand  hauls  in  fish  and  throws  out  hooks  with  a 
methodical  precision,  a  kind  of  slow  haste,  which  unites 
the  greatest  speed  with  the  utmost  security  against  foul- 
ing lines. 

"And  now  the  rain  increases.  We  hear  jibs  rattling 
down ;  and  glancing  up  hastily,  I  am  surprised  to  find  our 
vessel  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  the  fleet,  which  has 
already  become  aware  that  we  have  got  fish  alongside. 
Meantime  the  wind  rises,  and  the  sea  struggles  against  the 
rain,  which  is  endeavoring  with  its  steady  patter  to  sub- 
due the  turmoil  of  old  ocean.  We  are  already  on  our  third 


332  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

barrel  each,  and  still  the  fish  come  in  as  fast  as  ever,  and 
the  business  (sport  it  has  ceased  to  be  some  time  since), 
continues  with  vigor  undiminished.  Thick  beads  of  per- 
spiration chase  each  other  down  our  faces.  Jackets,  caps, 
and  even  over-shirts,  are  thrown  off,  to  give  more  free- 
dom to  the  limbs  that  are  worked  to  their  utmost. 

"  'Hillo !  Where  are  the  fish  ?'  All  gone.  Every  line 
is  felt  eagerly  for  a  bite,  but  not  the  faintest  nibble  is  per- 
ceptible. The  mackerel,  which  but  a  moment  ago  were 
fairly  rushing  on  board,  have  in  that  moment  disappeared 
so  completely  that  not  a  sign  of  one  is  left.  The  vessel 
next  under  our  lee  holds  them  a  little  longer  than  we,  but 
they  finally  also  disappear  from  her  side.  And  so  on  all 
around  us. 

"And  now  we  have  time  to  look  about  us — to  compare 
notes  on  each  other's  successes — to  straighten  our  back- 
oones,  nearly  broken  and  aching  horribly  with  the  con- 
stant reaching  over ;  to  examine  our  fingers,  cut  to  pieces 
and  grown  sensationless  with  the  perpetual  dragging  of 
small  lines  across  them — to — 'There,  the  skipper's  got  a 
bite!  Here  they  are  again,  boys,  and  big  fellows,  too!' 
Everybody  rushes  once  more  to  the  rail,  and  business 
commences  again,  but  not  at  so  fast  a  rate  as  before.  By- 
and-by  there  is  another  cessation,  and  we  hoist  our  jib 
and  run  off  a  little  way,  into  a  new  berth. 

"While  running  across,  I  take  the  first  good  look  at 
the  state  of  affairs  in  general.  We  lie,  as  before  said, 
nearly  in  the  center  of  the  whole  fleet,  which  from  origi- 
nally covering  an  area  of  perhaps  fifteen  miles  each  way, 
has  'knotted  up*  into  a  little  space,  not  above  two  miles 
square.  In  many  places,  although  the  sea  is  tolerably 
rough,  the  vessels  lie  so  closely  together  that  one  could 
almost  jump  from  one  to  the  other.  The  greatest  skill  and 
care  are  necessary  on  such  occasions  to  keep  them  apart, 


MERCHANT  MARINE 


333 


and  prevent  the  inevitable  consequences  of  a  collision,  a 
general  smash-up  of  masts,  booms,  bulwarks,  etc.  Yet  a 
great  fish-day  like  this  rarely  passes  off  without  some 
vessel  sustaining  serious  damage.  We  thread  our  way 
among  the  vessels  with  as  much  care  and  as  daintily  as  a 
man  would  walk  over  ground  covered  with  eggs;  and 
finally  get  into  a  berth  under  the  lee  of  a  vessel  which 
seems  to  hold  the  fish  pretty  well.  Here  we  fish  away  by 
spells,  for  they  have  become  'spirty/  that  is,  they  are 
capricious,  and  appear  and  disappear  suddenly." 

Three  causes  make  the  occupation  of  those  fishermen 


TRAWLING  FROM  A  DORY 


who  go  for  cod  and  halibut  to  the  Newfoundland  Banks 
extra  hazardous — the  almost  continual  fog,  the  swift  steel 
Atlantic  liners  always  plowing  their  way  at  high  speed 
across  the  fishing  grounds,  heedless  of  fog  or  darkness, 
and  the  custom  of  fishing  with  trawls  which  must  be 
tended  from  dories.  The  trawl,  which  is  really  only  an 
extension  of  hand-lines,  is  a  French  device  adopted  by 
American  fishermen  early  in  the  last  century.  One  long 
hand-line,  supported  by  floats,  is  set-at  some  distance  from 


334  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

the  schooner.  From  it  depend  a  number  of  short  lines 
with  baited  hooks,  set  at  brief  intervals.  The  fisherman, 
in  his  dory,  goes  from  one  to  the  other  of  these  lines 
pulling  them  in,  throwing  the  fish  in  the  bottom  of  the 
boat  and  rebaiting  his  hooks.  When  his  dory  is  full  he 
returns  with  his  load  to  the  schooner — if  he  can  find  her. 
That  is  the  peril  ever  present  to  the  minds  of  the  men 
in  the  dory — the  danger  of  losing  the  schooner.  On  the 
Banks  the  sea  is  always  running  moderately  high,  and 
the  great  surges,  even  on  the  clearest  days,  will  often 
shut  out  the  dories  from  the  vision  of  the  lookout.  The 
winds  and  the  currents  tend  to  sweep  the  little  fishing- 
boats  away,  and  though  a  schooner  with  five  or  six  dories 
out  hovers  about  them  like  a  hen  guarding  her  chickens, 
sailing  a  triangular  beat  planned  to  include  all  the  smaller 
boats,  yet  it  too  often  happens  that  night  falls  with  one 
boat  missing.  Then  on  the  schooner  all  is  watchfulness. 
Cruising  slowly  about,  burning  flares  and  blowing  the 
hoarse  fog-horn,  those  on  board  search  for  the  missing 
ones  until  day  dawns  or  the  lost  are  found.  Sometimes 
day  comes  in  a  fog,  a  dense,  dripping,  gray  curtain,  more 
impenetrable  than  the  blackest  night,  for  through  it  no 
flare  will  shine,  and  even  the  sound  of  the  braying  horn 
or  tolling  bell  is  so  curiously  distorted,  that  it  is  difficult 
to  tell  from  what  quarter  it  comes.  No  one  who  has  not 
seen  a  fog  on  the  Banks  can  quite  imagine  its  dense 
opaqueness.  When  it  settles  down  on  a  large  fleet  of 
fishermen,  with  hundreds  of  dories  out,  the  peril  and  per- 
plexity of  the  skippers  are  extreme.  In  one  instant  after 
the  dull  gray  curtain  falls  over  the  ocean,  each  vessel  is 
apparently  as  isolated  as  though  alone  on  the  Banks.  A 
dory  forty  feet  away  is  invisible.  The  great  fleet  of  busy 
schooners,  tacking  back  and  forth,  watching  their  boats, 
is  suddenly  obliterated.  Hoarse  cries,  the  tooting  of 


STRIKES    A    SCHOONER    AND    SHEARS    THROUGH    HE?.   I.IKE    A    KNIFE. 


MERCHANT  MARINE 


335 


horns  and  the  clanging  of  bells,  sound  through  the  misty 
air,  and  now  and  then  a  ghostly  schooner  glides  by,  per- 
haps scraping  the  very  gunwale  and  carrying  away  bits 
of  rail  and  rigging  to  the  accompaniment  of  New  England 
profanity.  This  is  the  dangerous  moment  for  every  one  on 
the  Banks,  for  right  through  the  center  of  the  fishing 
ground  lies  the  pathway  of  the  great  steel  ocean  steam- 
ships plying  between  England  and  the  United  States. 
Colossal  engines  force  these  great  masses  of  steel  through 
sea  and  fog.  Each  captain  is  eager  to  break  a  record; 
each  one  knows  that  a  reputation  for  fast  trips  will  make 
his  ship  popular  and  increase  his  usefulness  to  the  com- 
pany. In  theory  he  is  supposed  to  slow  down  in  crossing 
the  Banks;  in  fact  his  great  12,000- ton  ship  rushes 


REVENUE  CUTTER 


336  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

through  at  eighteen  miles  an  hour.  If  she  hits  a  dory  and 
sends  two  men  to  their  long  rest,  no  one  aboard  the  ocean 
leviathan  will  ever  know  it.  If  she  strikes  a  schooner  and 
shears  through  her  like  a  knife  through  cheese,  there  will 
be  a  slight  vibration  of  the  steel  fabric,  but  not  enough  to 
alarm  the  passengers;  the  lookout  will  have  caught  a 
hasty  glimpse  of  a  ghostly  craft,  and  heard  plaintive  cries 
for  help,  then  the  fog  shuts  down  on  all,  like  the  curtain 
on  the  last  act  of  a  tragedy.  Even  if  the  great  steamship 
were  stopped  at  once,  her  momentum  would  carry  her  a 
mile  beyond  the  spot  before  a  boat  could  be  lowered,  and 
then  it  would  be  almost  impossible  to  find  the  floating 
wreckage  in  the  fog.  So,  usually,  the  steamships  press 
on  with  unchecked  speed,  their  officers  perhaps  breathing 
a  sigh  of  pity  for  the  victims,  but  reflecting  that  it  is  a 
sailor's  peril  to  which  those  on  the  biggest  and  staunchest 
of  ships  are  exposed  almost  equally  with  the  fishermen. 
For  was  it  not  on  the  Banks  and  in  a  fog  that  the  blow 
was  struck  which  sent  "La  Bourgogne"  to  the  bottom 
with  more  than  four  hundred  souls  ? 


CHAPTER  X 


THE  FUTURE  OF  OUR  MERCHANT  MARINE — How  WAR  STIMU- 
LATED IT — ACTION  OF  CONGRESS — DELAYS  AND  CONTROVERSIES — 
WOOD  OR  STEEL? — THE  SHIPBUILDING  PROGRAMME— THE  IN- 
DUSTRIAL CITIES — THE  PROBLEM  OF  LABOR — TWENTY  THOU- 
SAND TONS  AFLOAT— INTERNATIONAL  COMPETITION— COST  OF 
MAINTAINING  AMERICAN  SHIPS — FINDING  AND  TRAINING  THE 
SAILORS. 


SO  much  for  the  past  of  the  United  States  afloat.  What 
is  its  present  outlook  for  the  future? 
The  great  war  at  first  enormously  stimulated  the  de- 
mand for  ships.  Had  the  Germans  observed  the  earlier 
rules  of  international  law,  and  respected  neutral  rights 
at  sea,  a  neutral  nation  like  the  United  States  would 
have  built  up  the  greatest  merchant  fleet  the  world  had 
ever  known.  As  it  was  our  existing  shipyards  were 
crowded  with  work  and  every  "old  hooker" — as  the  sail- 
ors call  them — could  get  a  charter.  Prices  were  amaz- 
ing to  old  shipping  men.  Before  the  war  began  ships 
could  be  chartered  for  transatlantic  service  for  one 
dollar  a  ton  a  month.  After  the  war  had  been  in  progress 
for  some  months,  and  before  we  had  entered  upon  it, 
this  rate  for  service  outside  the  war  zone  was  $13.88  a 
ton  a  month,  and  for  the  war  zone  service  the  charge 
was  twenty  to  twenty-one  dollars.  And  it  was  difficult 
to  get  ships  at  those  figures.  Freight  rates  on  cotton  to 
Liverpool  in  1914  averaged  35  cents  per  hundred 


338  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

pounds.  In  1912  they  were  $6.00.  Ships  salable  at 
sixty  to  eighty  dollars  a  ton  before  the  war  were  eagerly 
sought  at  $300.  It  was  not  unusual  for  a  ship  to  earn 
her  cost  on  a  single  voyage.  Naturally  these  prices 
caused  a  lively  demand  for  ships,  old  and  new,  but  it  soon 
became  apparent  that  it  could  not  be  met  by  unaided 
private  enterprise.  To  establish  a  shipyard  means  a 
heavy  expenditure  of  capital,  running  into  tens  of  mil- 
lions of  dollars.  To  build  a  steel  ship  used  to  take  well 
over  a  year,  though  war-time  enterprise  reduced  this  to 
an  average  of  two  months,  while  one  vessel,  the  "Tucka- 
hoe"  was  launched  in  27  days  and  delivered  ready  for 
cargo  in  37.  But  before  the  establishment  of  this  rec- 
ord of  speed  and  efficiency  it  appeared  that  a  new  comer 
in  the  shipbuilding  trade  would  have  to  spend  millions 
of  dollars  on  his  plant  and  not  begin  turning  out  com- 
pleted vessels  for  nearly  two  years.  Nobody  could  tell 
whether  the  war  would  last  that  long,  and  everybody 
knew  that  with  the  end  of  the  war  the  charter  value  of 
ships  would  instantly  drop.  Naturally,  therefore,  private 
capital  hesitated  about  embarking  on  so  perilous  an  en- 
terprise. 

The  situation  attracted  the  attention  of  Congress 
even  before  our  entrance  upon  the  war,  but  with  that 
event  the  creation  of  a  merchant  marine  at  any  cost  be- 
came imperative,  and  September,  1916,  the  Shipping 
Board  was  created  with  authority  "to  encourage,  develop 
and  create  a  naval  auxiliary  and  naval  reserve,  and 
a  merchant  marine  to  meet  the  requirements  of  the  com- 
merce of  the  United  States."  In  April  of  1917  the  United 
States  being  then  actively  at  war,  a  subordinate  corpora- 
tion— The  Emergency  Fleet  Corporation — was  organized 
with  a  capital  of  $50,000,000  to  build  ships,  and  to  co- 
operate with  private  yards  in  their  construction. 


MERCHANT  MARINE  339 

Looking  back  upon  the  work  then  begun  it  is  easy  to 
discover  grave  faults  in  organization,  instances  of  in- 
dividual failure,  seemingly  wild  extravagance,  and  a  wide 
divergence  from  the  highest  forms  of  efficiency  in  the 
work  of  the  Shipping  Board,  and  its  subordinate  cor- 
poration. Much  of  this  we  may  pass  over  hastily. 
Scandal  is  not  history,  and  quarrels  between  otherwise 
eminent  men  over  petty  points  of  personal  prerogative 
will  be  forgotten  long  before  the  ships  the  Government 
actually  did  build  have  begun  to  wear  out.  But  it  must 
be  recorded  that  the  nation  was  doomed  to  grave  dis- 
appointment in  the  hopes  it  had  formed  of  the  rapid  and 
business-like  creation  of  a  merchant  fleet.  The  more 
eminent  the  men  chosen  for  high  service  in  this  cause  the 
more  certain  they  seemed  to  quarrel  among  themselves 
over  issues  that  seemed  but  trival  to  the  public.  There 
were  repeated  changes  before  an  efficient  organization 
could  be  formed  and  every  change  meant  more  delay. 
Very  early  in  the  history  of  the  board  came  up  the  con- 
troversy between  the  advocates  of  wooden  and  of  steel 
ships — and  upon  this  rock  of  dissension  the  whole  came 
near  being  wrecked. 

In  this  controversy  great  interests  were  arrayed 
against  each  other,  and,  furthermore,  the  honest  convic- 
tions of  many  who  had  no  special  interest  to  serve  en- 
listed them  strongly  upon  one  side  or  the  other.  The 
problem  was  to  get  a  serviceable  merchant  marine  in  the 
quickest  time  possible.  The  advocates  of  an  all-steel  fleet 
laid  heaviest  emphasis  on  the  word  "serviceable."  They 
insisted  that  the  wooden  ship  was  a  thing  of  the  past, 
and  that,  once  the  war  was  over,  the  nation  would  suffer 
heavily  financially  if  left  with  a  large  fleet  of  such  craft 
in  its  hands,  as  they  were  not  economical  to  operate,  and 
cost  higher  premiums  for  insurance. 


340  THE   STORY    OF   OUR 

The  champions  of  wooden  ships  urged  in  response 
that  it  would  be  impossible  to  build  an  all-steel  fleet  in 
season  to  meet  the  emergency.  Conceding  that  the  steel 
ship  was  the  better  they  insisted  that  the  time  required 
for  building  yards  suitable  for  this  form  of  construction 
and  the  delay  that  would  necessarily  attend  the  furnish- 
ing of  steel  by  mills  already  overcrowded  by  orders  for 
munitions  would  postpone  to  the  distant  future  the  com- 
pletion of  a  fleet  which  should  be  ready  to  take  our 
soldiers  to  the  theater  of  war  and  carry  over  the  supplies 
necessary  to  maintain  them  there.  Nor  did  the  advocates 
of  wooden « ships  fail  to  point  out  the  special  advantages 
possessed  by  their  form  of  construction  in  this  particular 
emergency.  We  were  building  to  beat  the  submarine. 
Of  all  vessels  the  steel  ship  suffers  most  from  the  ex- 
plosion of  a  torpedo  beneath  her  hull.  A  hole  of  from 
five  to  ten  feet  long,  and  equally  broad  is  torn  in  the  thin 
"skin  of  the  ship,"  which  is  not  more  than  three-fourths 
of  an  inch  thick  at  most,  and  the  weight  of  the  hull,  de- 
prived of  interior  buoyancy  causes  it  to  sink  immediately. 
Many  steel  vessels  of  considerable  size  were  totally  en- 
gulfed in  less  than  two  minutes  after  sustaining  a  torpedo 
shock. 

A  wooden  bottom,  on  the  contrary,  is  not  so  badly 
shattered  by  a  torpedo  explosion,  while  the  natural  buoy- 
ancy of  the  hull,  unless  laden  with  a  particularly  heavy 
cargo,  will  keep  it  afloat  for  some  time  after  being  tor- 
pedoed. In  nearly  every  instance  of  the  destruction  of 
a  wooden  craft  the  submarine  was  forced  to  make  her 
work  complete  by  shell  fire,  or  by  sending  a  party  aboard 
to  put  the  torch  to  the  victim.  The  annals  of  the  sea 
are  full  of  stories  of  wooden  derelicts  that  floated  for 
years  after  being  abandoned  by  their  crews  as  in  a  sink- 
ing condition. 


MERCHANT  MARINE  341 

Like  most  hotly  contested  public  questions  this  con- 
troversy was  finally  ended  by  a  compromise.  While  the 
chief  tonnage  was  to  be  of  steel,  considerable  recognition 
was  given  to  the  builders  of  wooden  ships.  At  the  end 
of  1917  contracts  had  been  awarded  for  353  wooden  ves- 
sels, and  for  58  composite  vessels,  making  a  total  of  ton- 
nage other  than  steel  of  1,460,900.  In  the  eager  search 


MINOT'S    LEDGE   LIGHT 

for  ways  in  which  the  fleet  might  most  rapidly  be  in- 
creased marine  architects  turned  to  concrete  as  a  ship- 
building material.  To  the  unprofessional  mind  a  ship  of 
stone  seems  as  ridiculous  a  conception  as  seventy-five 
years  ago  a  ship  of  iron  appeared  to  the  multitude.  But 
even  before  the  war  concrete  barges  had  been  employed, 
and  the  method  of  construction  was  reasonably  perfected. 


342  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

It  was  urged  that  the  steel  rods  and  bars  used  in  re- 
enforcing  the  concrete  construction  could  be  made  at  the 
smaller  mills  and  thus  avoid  interfering  with  those  en- 
gaged in  producing  material  for  steel  ships.  Concrete 
could  be  made  anywhere ;  was  easily  handled  and  molded 
to  any  desired  form.  After  careful  consideration  a  stand- 
ard design  for  a  concrete  ship  of  3,500  tons  was  adopted 
and  contracts  let.  One  such  ship  had  been  completed  at 
the  time  of  the  publication  of  this  book — the  "Faith"- 
336  feet  long  with  45- foot  beam.  She  had  in  the  first 
six  months  of  her  service  made  the  long  run  from  Seattle 
to  a  Chilean  port,  thence  through  the  Panama  Canal  to 
Chili  again.  An  officer  said  of  her,  "She  may  not  be 
good  to  look  at,  but  she  certainly  delivers  the  goods." 
Her  service  afloat  has  as  yet  been  too  brief  to  justify  con- 
clusions as  to  the  merit  of  concrete  as  a  shipbuilding  ma- 
terial. Its  opponents  argue  that  a  hull  of  concrete  would 
lack  elasticity,  and  being  rigid,  would  crack  and  yield 
under  the  weight  of  the  cargo  in  the  racking  strain  of  a 
heavy  sea.  But  its  advocates  deny  this,  alleging  that  a 
re-enforced  concrete  ship  has  all  the  elasticity  of  an  all- 
steel  ship.  In  fact,  scientific  tests  have  shown  that  steel 
and  concrete  have  practically  the  same  co-efficient  of 
elasticity.  From  the  standpoint  of  economy  concrete 
leads  all  materials,  it  being  estimated  that  the  material 
for  a  5,ooo-ton  monolithic  ship  would  cost  $60,000,  while 
the  steel  for  a  freighter  of  the  same  size  would  cost 
$300,000.  Although  the  experience  of  the  United  States 
with  this  material  has  been  too  brief  to  be  of  much  value, 
Norway  has  built  and  operated  successfully  many  "ferro- 
concrete" ships.  A  curious  fact  is  that  the  method  of 
construction  there  compels  their  launching  keel  upper- 
most. They  are  righted  in  the  water  by  a  system  of  air- 
tight compartments. 


MERCHANT   MARINE  343 


In  August,  1917,  the  Shipping  Board  made  public  its 
program.  It  sounded  well,  too  well  by  far  as  the  results 
showed  eighteen  months  later.  The  first  step  was  the 
commandeering  of  all  vessels  under  construction  in 
American  yards,  whether  for  domestic  or  foreign  owners. 
This  added  at  once  1,500,000  tons  of  partially  com- 
pleted ships  to  the  American  fleet.  The  question  of 
compensation  went  over  for  later  determination.  But 
in  addition  to  this  the  Government  declared  its  purpose 
of  going  into  shipbuilding  on  its  own  account  on  a  colossal 
scale.  The  program  announced  on  September  I,  1918, 
provided  for  2,249  ships  of  wood  or  steel  with  a  dead- 
weight tonnage  of  13,212,712;  32  concrete  ships  of  301,- 
500  tons,  and  of  ships  requisitioned  which  were  already 
in  process  of  construction  in  private  yards  there  were 
402  with  a  gross  tonnage  of  2,790,000  tons. 

The  sudden  stoppage  of  the  war  materially  inter- 
rupted this  program.  Of  that  we  will  speak  more  defi- 
nitely later.  For  the  moment  we  may  consider  the  steps 
which  the  Government  took  to  prepare  for  the  con- 
struction of  the  great  fleet  which  war  made  necessary. 

The  requisitioned,  or  commandeered  ships  filled  all 
the  ways  in  the  established  private  yards.  The  navy 
yards  were  chock-a-block  with  naval  construction.  If 
the  merchant  fleet  was  to  be  built  in  season  to  be  of 
service  in  a  war  which  it  was  feared  might  last  four 
years — and  which  in  fact  lasted  only  twenty  months  after 
the  United  States  entered  upon  it— new  and  enormous 
shipyards  must  be  constructed.  Private  capital  could 
not  be  relied  upon  for  this  work  for  reasons  already 
set  forth.  Accordingly  the  Emergency  Fleet  Corporation 
gave  financial  assistance  for  the  expansion  of  the  exist- 
ing yards,  and  established  entirely  new  yards  for  which 
it  advanced  the  money.  Most  notable  of  these  corpora- 


344  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

tions  were  The  Submarine  Boat  Company,  The  American 
International  Corporation,  the  Merchants'  Shipbuild- 
ing Company  and  the  Fore  River  Company,  at  Fore  River, 
Mass.  The  first  named  established  great  yards  at 
Newark,  N.  J.,  where  at  times  as  many  as  14,000  hands 
were  employed.  The  Merchants'  Shipbuilding  Com- 
pany was  located  at  Bristol,  R.  I.,  and  the  American 
International  Corporation  at  Hog  Island,  near  Philadel- 
phia. 

The  last  named  established  the  greatest  shipyard  the 
world  has  ever  known,  and  did  it  at  a  cost  which  might 
well  stagger  the  nation,  for  it  was  built  with  public 
funds.  Hog  Island,  lying  eight  miles  from  Philadelphia, 
in  the  Delaware,  was  a  tract  of  860  acres  of  swamp,  and 
bog  and  salt  marsh,  valueless  for  the  moment  and  held 
by  speculators  for  future  profit.  When  the  Government 
needed  it  for  shipyard  purposes  the  barren  waste  became 
worth  $2,000  an  acre,  which  was  cheerfully  paid.  One 
year  from  that  time  the  swampy  island  was  transformed, 
according  to  a  report  of  the  Department  of  Justice,  into 
"a  complete  industrial  city  of  30,000  men,  served  by  two 
trunk  lines  of  railroad,  with  eighty  miles  of  yard  track- 
age of  its  own,  with  its  own  waterworks,  filtration  plant, 
sewage  disposal  plant,  fire  protection  and  police  systems, 
with  fully  equipped  shipways,  shops,  warehouses,  engi- 
neering, administrative  and  welfare  buildings,  and 
equipped  to  deliver  to  the  Government  two  completed 
7,5oo-ton  steel  cargo  vessels  each  week." 

All  of  which  was  a  notable  achievement.  But  it  cost 
prodigious  sums  of  money.  And  moreover  when  the 
war  came  to  its  sudden  close  in  November,  1918,  one  ship 
only  had  been  completed — the  "Quistconck,"  christened 
by  Mrs.  Woodrow  Wilson  in  August  of  that  year.  The 
occasion  was  made  duly  dramatic  by  the  presence  of  the 


MERCHANT  MARINE  345 

President,  the  service  of  a  great  collation  to  hosts  of 
guests,  and  the  attendance  of  a  throng  of  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  whom  over  500  were  prostrated  by  the  heat. 

When  not  long  afterwards  the  cost  of  the  plant  which 
had  completed  that  ship  was  made  public  it  might  well 
have  prostrated  many  more  than  500. 

The  estimated  cost  of  the  Hog  Island  plant,  as  pre- 
sented at  the  time  the  contract  was  awarded,  was  $21,- 
000,000.  In  November,  1917,  the  Government,  recog- 
nizing that  at  the  moment  speed  in  'construction  rather 
than  economy  was  the  crying  need,  raised  that  estimate  to 
$27,000,000.  By  the  summer  of  1918  the  demands  of 
the  corporation  for  more  funds  had  become  so  insistent, 
and  rumors  of  reckless  extravagance  so  current  that  an 
investigation  by  the  Department  of  Justice  was  ordered. 
This  investigation  elicited  the  fact  that  the  total  cost 
would  be  nearly  $64,000,000  of  which,  however,  $9,000,- 
ooo  was  due  to  orders  for  additional  tonnage  from  the 
Emergency  Fleet  Corporation. 

At  this  moment  one  ship  only  had  left  the  Hog  Island 
ways,  and  that  fact  made  the  record  of  expenditure  seem 
the  more  inexcusable.  But  that  was  an  unfair  way  of 
considering  the  situation.  The  fifty  ways  in  the  yard 
each  held  a  ship  in  more  or  less  advanced  stages  of  con- 
struction. The  preliminary  cost  had  been  prodigious, 
but  the  yard  was  ready  to  turn  out  ships  even  at  that 
moment  at  the  rate  of  two  a  week,  with  the  possibility 
of  a  record  of  four  a  week  should  they  be  needed. 

Unluckily  for  the  promoters  and  builders  of  the  Hog 
Island  and  other  plants  the  war  ended  suddenly.  The 
crying  need  for  ships  was  abruptly  ended.  Even  those 
on  the  ways  approaching  completion  could  be  dispensed 
with  until  completed  at  the  leisurely  pace  of  peace  times. 
And  whether,  with  peace,  there  can  be  found  employ- 


346  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

ment  for  this  mighty  center  of  shipbuilding  will  depend 
wholly  upon  the  wisdom  of  the  legislation  by  which  the 
nation  shall  endeavor  to  build  up  again  its  merchant 
marine.  It  must  be  remembered  that  while  this,  the 
greatest  of  all  shipyards,  was  being  completed,  others  of 
less  extent  were  being  constructed,  while  each  of  the  old 
private  yards  was  developed  to  the  utmost  capacity  of 
their  territory.  Not  only  at  Hog  Island,  but  at  Fore 
River,  at  Bristol  and  at  Newport  News  are  now  ship- 
building plants  any  one  of  which  could  undertake  all 
the  shipbuilding  which  was  needed  in  the  United  States 
a  decade  ago.  To  find  reasonable  employment  for  all  in 
future  will  be  no  easy  problem. 

Each  of  the  great  yards  is  a  small  city  in  itself.  At 
Hog  Island  are  twenty  acres  covered  with  buildings — 
shops,  barracks,  mess  halls,  storehouses,  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
buildings  and  a  shipbuilders'  school.  More  than  $9,000,- 
ooo  was  advanced  by  the  United  States  to  meet  the 
necessary  needs.  A  city  of  350,000  people  could  be  sup- 
plied with  the  water  supply  system  installed.  Enough 
electric  power  is  distributed  to  run  the  trolleys  and  elec- 
tric machinery  of  Providence  with  its  300,000  people. 
Seventy-five  miles  of  railroad  within  the  yard  are  sup- 
plemented by  hundreds  of  trucks,  motor  lorries  and 
travelling  cranes. 

In  all  the  great  yards  the  questions  of  first  getting 
the  men  and  then  housing  them  were  of  supreme  impor- 
tance. From  the  earliest  days  of  the  war  the  unem- 
ployed as  a  class  had  disappeared  from  the  United 
States,  the  demands  of  the  munitions  factories  absorbing 
labor  to  such  an  extent  that  the  farm  lands  of  the  nation 
could  hardly  be  worked.  Scarcely  had  the  shipbuilding 
program  been  determined  upon  when  it  became  apparent 
that  the  nation  was  going  to  be  dragged  into  war.  That 


MERCHANT  MARINE  347 

meant  the  ultimate  withdrawal  from  productive  industry 
of  not  less  than  5,000,000  men  if  the  war  should  prove 
as  long  and  bitterly  contested  as  at  that  moment  seemed 
probable.  Half  a  million  men  would  be  needed  for  the 
shipyards.  As  a  matter  of  fact  no  less  than  625,000  were 
actually  so  employed  in  September,  1918.  The  problem 
of  where  and  how  to  get  them  was  one  to  puzzle  those 
who  must  solve  it. 

Moreover,  shipbuilding  calls  for  men  of  a  multitude 
of  trades.  To  erect  the  shipyards  required  armies  of  un- 
skilled labor,  but  to  build  the  ships  demanded  men  skilled 
in  trades  and  handicrafts.  Machinists,  metal  workers  of 
every  class,  acetylene  and  electric  welders,  plumbers, 
foundrymen,  electricians,  cabinet  workers  all  find  occupa- 
tion on  a  modern  steel  ship.  A  special  type  of  labor 
known  as  shipwrights  is  required  in  building  wooden 
ships.  It  had  been  thought  that  men  bred  to  this  trade 
had  largely  disappeared  with  the  decadence  of  the  indus- 
try, but  in  1917  an  appeal  sent  out  through  the  agencies 
of  the  Federal  Employment  Service  produced  the  names 
and  addresses  of  12,000  ship  carpenters  within  forty-six 
hours. 

While  this  was  reassuring  it  did  not  wholly  meet  the 
needs  of  the  moment.  To  build  the  ships  which  we  ex- 
pected to  need  during  the  war  required  an  army  of 
trained  workmen  that  at  the  moment  simply  did  not  exist. 
Just  as  ore  from  the  ground  had  to  be  worked  over  until 
it  became  steel  plates  all  ready  to  be  bolted  to  the  frame 
of  a  ship,  just  as  clerks  and  peddlers  and  bootblacks  had 
to  be  caught  up  by  the  draft  and  painstakingly  educated 
until  they  were  fit  to  be  soldiers,  to  fight  and  to  be 
killed,  so  the  raw  material  of  the  shipworkers  had  to  be 
drawn  from  trades  resembling  those  they  were  to  prac- 
tice and  educated  to  the  point  of  efficiency.  Accordingly 


348  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

under  the  general  supervision  of  the  Federal  Board  of 
Vocational  Instruction  schools  in  shipbuilding,  and  its 
various  trades  were  established  not  merely  at  each  of  the 
great  yards,  but  in  many  colleges,  and  trade,  technical 
and  manual  training  schools.  In  this  way  a  great  body 
of  mechanics  skilled  in  the  component  trades  which  go 
to  making  up  a  great  ship  was  rapidly  being  built  up 
when  the  conclusion  of  peace  laid  a  staying  hand  upon 
all  this  work. 

The  building  up  of  any  great  new  industry — and  ship- 
building on  a  large  scale  was  virtually  new  in  this  coun- 
try— creates  new  issues  and  educates  the  public  mind  to 
problems  of  hitherto  unsuspected  importance  in  indus- 
trial organization.  Only  in  a  few  great  concerns  prior  to 
the  war  had  the  importance  of  what  was  known  as  "the 
labor  turnover"  been  recognized.  The  phrase  expresses 
succinctly  the  volume  of  changes  in  the  working  force 
due  to  a  haphazard  system  of  "hiring  and  firing."  It  has 
taken  centuries  for  great  organizers  to  discover  how 
heavy  is  the  burden  laid  upon  their  institutions  by  a  sys- 
tem which  has  made  the  discharge  of  a  workman  the 
only  penalty  for  the  violation  of  discipline  or  failure  in 
efficiency.  The  roving  tendency  of  workmen,  ever  ready 
to  shift  from  plant  to  plant,  or  from  job  to  job,  often  as 
much  in  search  of  novelty  as  in  order  to  better  their  con- 
dition is  a  considerable  factor  in  the  problem.  At  one 
time  in  the  Hog  Island  yard  it  was  found  that  more  than 
seven  times  as  many  men  were  hired  during  the  week  as 
were  left  on  the  payroll  on  Saturday  night.  In  one  yard, 
in  November,  1916,  before  the  war  had  added  to  the 
stringency  in  the  labor  market,  it  was  found  that  of  3,000 
men  employed  less  than  half  had  stayed  with  the  con- 
cern for  eleven  months.  With  this  as  a  basis  it  was  com- 
puted that  to  keep  500,000  men  at  work  in  the  shipyards 


MERCHANT   MARINE  349 

each  year  will  have  to  see  more  than  a  million  hired.  It 
is  estimated  by  large  employers  that  to  fit  an  ordinary 
unskilled  workman  for  the  duties  of  his  job  costs  from 
five  to  ten  dollars,  while  an  expert  workman  is  worth 
from  thirty  to  two  hundred  dollars.  A  foreman  well 
equipped  for  his  place,  may  represent  a  value  to  his 
employers  of  several  thousand  dollars. 

Accordingly  all  large  employers  of  labor  are  trying 
to  reduce  this  "labor  turnover"  as  much  as  possible,  and 
to  the  Shipping  Board,  with  its  supervision  over  a  labor 
army  that  would  reach  far  into  the  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands it  was  a  problem  of  vital  importance. 

The  first  necessity  was  for  the  construction  of  homes 
for  the  workers  near  the  plants  in  which  they  were  em- 
ployed. To  aid  in  this  work  Congress  made  an  initial 
appropriation  of  $50,000,000  and  other  expenditures  were 
made  from  Government  funds.  At  Hog  Island  over 
5,000  houses  were  erected,  and  at  Newport  News  and 
Bristol  small  cities  were  created  as  by  magic  for  the  use 
of  the  shipworkers. 

Perhaps  it  was  because  of  the  feeling  of  our  peo- 
ple that  most  of  the  war-time  industries,  even  shipbuild- 
ing, would  fall  into  decadence  after  the  war  is  over  that 
our  Government  did  not  emulate  that  of  Great  Britain 
and  build  permanent  towns  for  these  communities  of 
workingmen.  In  England  the  Government  encouraged 
with  loans  and  direct  gifts  the  establishment  of  perma- 
nent industrial  villages  around  the  munition  plants.  It 
is  the  belief  of  the  Government  there  that  these  plants 
will  now  be  turned  to  other  productive  uses,  and  that 
the  houses  will  still  be  needed  for  the  workers.  Perma- 
nent school  buildings,  parks,  playgrounds,  waterworks, 
stores  and  theaters  are  provided.  With  us  the  villages 
have  more  of  a  temporary  air,  resembling  army  canton- 


350  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

ments.  Barracks  and  frame  cottages  are  the  rule.  At 
Bristol,  however,  with  the  financial  aid  of  the  Emergency 
Fleet  Corporation,  a  model  town  was  laid  out  adjoining 
the  shipping  plant.  This  little  city  of  Harriman  was 
planned  from  the  bottom,  with  spaces  set  aside  for 
schools,  churches  and  public  parks,  and  the  locations  of 
is  quasi-public  institutions,  like  the  theater,  hotel  and 
department  store  indicated.  Brick  and  stucco  are  the 
materials  used,  and  for  families  are  individual  houses  of 
six  rooms  each,  232  group  houses,  and  a  great  number 
of  apartment  and  boarding  houses.  For  bachelors  are 


WHISTLING    BUOY 

lodging  houses,  dormitories  and  a  number  of  small  bunga- 
lows. The  result  is  a  pleasing  town  in  which  comfort- 
able homes,  at  cheap  rents,  and  many  advantages  only 
enjoyed  in  larger  cities  are  offered  to  the  shipyard 
workers.  Hog  Island,  being  close  to  the  city  of  Philadel- 
phia, needed  less  elaborate  arrangements  for  housing  its 
working  people,  but  both  there  and  at  the  plant  of  the 
Submarine  Boat  Corporation  at  Newark  the  need  that 
exists  has  been  met  by  the  erection  of  scientifically  de- 
signed dwellings. 


MERCHANT  MARINE  351 

It  may  be  said,  however,  that  in  housing  their  work- 
ingmen,  in  providing  for  their  comfort  and  entertainment 
— at  Hog  Island  is  a  fine  band,  several  theaters  and  a 
magnificent  Y.  M.  C.  A.  building — and  in  guarding  by 
agreements  with  labor  unions  against  strikes  or  lockouts, 
the  American  shipbuilders'  organizations  have  done  about 
all  that  is  possible  to  make  labor  contented,  and  the  con- 
ditions of  employment  permanent. 

What  is  the  total  of  tonnage  v  that  will  eventually 
emerge  from  these  yards  it  is  impossible  to  say  at  the 
moment.  In  addition  to  ships  building  in  the  United 
States  contracts  were  awarded  for  40,000  tons  in  China 
and  for  thirty  vessels  aggregating  245,850  tons  in  Japan. 
In  1918  the  President  took  over  700,000  tons  of  Holland 
shipping  then  lying  idle  in  American  ports.  New  vessels 
completed  in  American  yards  up  to  September,  10,18 — 
the  latest  report  available — aggregated  401  with  a  total 
tonnage  of  2,340,  223.  When  the  armistice  was  signed  in 
November  of  that  year  the  sea-going  tonnage  of  the 
United  States  numbered  about  1,500  ships,  ranging  from 
the  tramp  of  1,200  tons  to  the  magnificent  German-built 
"Leviathan,"  originally  the  "Vaterland,"  with  a  tonnage 
of  54,000  tons.  The  Government  owned  outright  570 
steamships  with  an  aggregate  tonnage  exceeding  3,000,- 
ooo  and  of  these  469  of  2,500,000  dead- weight  tonnage 
were  new  ships  built  by  the  Emergency  Fleet  Corpora- 
tion. In  all  the  Shipping  Board  controlled  at  this  period 
not  less  than  10,000,000  dead  weight  tons  of  high-class, 
deep-sea  ships. 

It  was  at  that  time  the  forecast  of  Chairman  Hurley,  / 
of  the  Shipping  Board,  that  by  1920  the  American  mer-/ 
chant  fleet  would  aggregate  25,000,000  tons.     But  it  be- 
came apparent,  shortly  after  the  armistice  was  signed, 
that  this  estimate  must  be  materially  revised  downward. 


352  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

For  with  the  end  of  the  necessity  for  sending  troops  to 
Europe  came  the  prospect  of  the  return  of  the  army 
already  there,  and  the  consequent  slackening  of  the  need 
for  ships  for  munitions  and  supplies.  Moreover,  peace 
brought  the  end  of  the  submarine  campaign,  and  ships 
once  in  service  had  only  the  ordinary  perils  of  the  deep 
to  encounter.  Accordingly  many  contracts  were  cancelled 
by  the  Government,  of  course  at  a  heavy  loss,  and  over- 
time work  and  "speeding  up"  were  abandoned  in  the 
shipyards. 

A  number  of  contracts  were  summarily  cancelled  in 
cases  where  labor  troubles  threatened  construction,  and 
a  compromise  between  employer  and  workman  was  diffi- 
cult if  not  impossible  to  secure.  The  United  States, 
being  in  no  extreme  need  of  the  shipping  involved,  took 
the  view  that  in  such  cases  the  simplest  method  would 
be  to  cancel  the  job  which  furnished  the  profit  over 
which  "boss"  and  workman  were  fighting.  It  was  be- 
lieved that  a  few  such  cancellations  would  act  as  a 
deterrent  to  other  similar  dissensions. 

Whatever  its  effect  upon  the  labor  problem  it  is  evi- 
dent that  this  policy,  coupled  with  the  wholesale  cancel- 
lation of  contracts,  and  scrapping  of  work  already  done, 
means  a  very  material  reduction  of  the  American  mer- 
chant marine  below  the  figures  fixed  at  the  outset  by  Mr. 
Hurley.  Competent  authorities  estimated  the  United 
States  tonnage  afloat,  or  approaching  completion,  in  Feb- 
ruary, 1919,  at  11,500,000  tons.  Great  Britain  at  the 
same  time  was  credited  with  16,200,000  tons.  But  of 
the  American  fleet  fully  half  is  registered  as  lake  or 
coastwise  shipping. 

Comparisons  of  this  sort,  however,  are  but  unprofit- 
able. The  question  before  the  American  people  is  not 
whether  they  are  to  be  first  upon  the  sea,  but  whether 


MERCHANT  MARINE  353 

they  are  going  to  build,  man  and  operate  a  purely  Ameri- 
can merchant  marine,  adequate  to  our  needs  in  war  and 
peace,  and  capable  of  extending  American  trade  and  in- 
fluence to  all  quarters  of  the  globe. 

So  far  as  the  shipbuilding  program  goes  there  is  every 
reason  for  confidence  in  the  attainment  of  this  ideal. 
Even  with  the  curtailments  already  made  and  those  which 
will  inevitably  follow,  we  shall  have  by  1920  a  fleet  of 
ocean-going  cargo  ships  that  need  fear  no  foreign  rivalry. 
Then  we  will  be  confronted  with  the  difficulty  of  oper- 
ating them  at  a  profit  in  the  presence  of  foreign  com- 
petition in  a  world  market.  Our  coastwise  trade,  and 
our  lake  shipping  are  protected.  But  the  Seven  Seas  are 
open  to  all,  and  the  American  ship  trading  to  Yokahama, 
Rangoon  or  European  ports  must  compete  in  an  open 
market  for  its  freights. 

That  American  ship  will,  to  begin  with,  have  cost 
much  more  to  build.  As  matters  now  stand  the  ships 
built  in  our  yards  under  war  pressure  represent  an  aver- 
age cost  of  from  $200  to  $250  per  ton,  as  against  $75  a 
ton  in  British  shipyards.  Bear  in  mind,  when  we  speak 
of  an  American  merchant  marine  we  mean  one  built  in 
American  yards  as  well  as  manned  by  American  sailors. 
With  the  exception  of  Great  Britain,  and  Germany  now 
out  of  the  running  temporarily,  no  nation  has  ever  in- 
sisted upon  both  of  these  qualities  in  the  ships  under  its. 
flag.  Many  of  the  best  ships  of  Japan  and  Norway,  to 
note  only  two  of  our  competitors,  were  built  on  the  Clyde 
or  Tyne — the  world's  cheapest  shipyards. 

Only  the  United  States  faces  the  problem  of  main- 
taining a  deep-sea  fleet,  built  in  the  most  expensive  yards, 
and  manned  by  the  most  highly  paid  seamen. 

It  must  be  kept  in  mind  that  the  present  cost  of  ships 
is  based  very  largely  upon  the  feverish  and  extravagant 


354  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

methods  of  construction  compelled  by  war-time  needs. 
This  fact  applies  to  British-built  ships  as  well  as  those  of 
American  construction,  but  to  a  less  degree.  In  times 
of  peace,  however,  the  superior  efficiency  of  American 
labor  goes  far  to  make  up  the  difference  in  the  wage 
scale  between  the  United  States  and  England.  More- 
over, wages  in  the  British  shipyards  will  never  fall  to  the 
standard  maintained  before  the  war.  It  is  probable, 
therefore,  that  in  future  the  initial  cost  of  vessels  from 
British  and  American  yards  will  be  more  nearly  equal. 
It  is  already  apparent  that  the  high  cost  of  the  present 
American  merchant  fleet  due  to  war  construction  will  be 
reduced  by  charging  off  more  than  a  billion  dollars  as 
the  share  which  the  nation  as  a  whole  must  pay  for  the 
creation  of  the  fleet  which  was  to  serve  it  through  the 
critical  days  of  a  great  war. 

So  much  for  the  initial  cost  of  the  fleet — an  important 
factor  in  the  later  cost  of  operation  for  interest  upon 
the  cost  of  the  ship  must  necessarily  be  reckoned  into 
the  cost  of  operation. 

Chief  of  the  operating  costs  comes  the  question  of 
wages.  Here  at  once  we  encounter  a  serious  difficulty. 
Japan,  which  alone  among  our  serious  rivals  afloat,  pays 
more  for  its  ships  than  do  British  shipowners,  is  able 
to  make  up  for  this  handicap  by  the  extremely  low  wages 
of  its  seamen.  All  oriental  wages  are,  in  comparison  to 
those  of  American  workingmen  pitfully  small.  England 
recognizes  this  fact  and  mans  her  ships  in  great  part  with 
Chinese  coolies  or  Lascars.  American  labor  cannot  and 
should  not  be  asked  to  compete  with  seamen  of  this  grade. 

Enthusiastic  writers  concerning  the  future  of  the 
United  States  on  the  sea  are  too  apt  to  gloss  over  this 
very  serious  obstacle  to  our  preeminence  afloat.  Con- 
gress, responsive  to  a  healthy  public  unwillingness  to 


MERCHANT  MARINE  355 

have  any  sort  of  American  labor  degraded  to  Oriental 
standards,  has  guarded  against  this  in  a  seaman's  law, 
bearing  the  name  of  Senator  LaFollette,  but  in  fact  pre- 
pared by  Andrew  Furuseth,  the  able  and  devoted  head 
of  the  seaman's  union.  This  law  by  providing  that  75 
per  cent  of  the  seamen  on  any  American  ship  must  be 
able  to  understand  commands  spoken  in  English,  bars  at 
once  the  employment  of  cheap  Asiatic  labor.  But  it  also 
adds  at  once  to  the  cost  of  operating  an  American  ship. 
How  the  handicap  is  to  be  removed  without  degrading 
the  American  sailor  is  the  problem  now  vexing  ship- 
owners and  legislators  interested  in  building  up  an  Ameri- 
can marine.  Chinese  and  Japanese  firemen  and  deck- 
hands on  the  Pacific  receive  $7.50  to  $9.00  a  month ; 
Americans  at  least  $45.  How  is  this  difference  to  be 
equalized?  On  the  Atlantic  foreign  ships  are  more  and 
more  coming  to  carry  cheap  Asiatic  crews. 

The  true  author  of  the  LaFollette  law  is,  as  this  is 
written,  in  Europe  endeavoring  to  make  international 
rules  for  ameliorating  the  condition  of  the  sailor. 
Whether  this  can  be  accomplished  is  exceedingly  doubt- 
ful, although  the  growing  strength  of  labor  organiza- 
tions in  England  will  doubtless  help.  Indeed,  some  prog- 
ress had  been  made  as  this  was  written.  Should  the  en- 
deavor fail  only  the  action  of  Congress  in  equalizing  the 
difference  in  wages  on  American  and  foreign  ships  can 
save  the  former  from  defeat  in  the  race  for  maritime 
supremacy. 

Because  of  war-time  conditions  any  precise  estimate 
of  the  comparative  cost  of  building  and  operating  Ameri- 
can and  British  ships  at  the  present  moment  is  futile.  But 
the  following  table  shows  at  a  glance  the  handicap  under 
which  American  shipowners  labored  prior  to  the  war : 


356  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

Excess  Per 

British,  American,  Expense  of    cent 

8,001  tons  7,914  tons  American  Excess 

Cost  of  steamship $647,640  $1,010,135  $362,495         56 

Wages,   crew,   per  annum 20,421  37,410  16,989         83 

Victualing  crew,  per  annum....          9,490  11,862  2,372         25 

Interest,   6%  per  annum 38,858  60,608  21,750         56 

Depreciation,    5%    per    annum..        32,382  50,507  18,125          56 

Insurance,  3%  per  annum    ....        19,429  30,304  10,875         56 

Repairs    12,000  14,400  2,400         20 

Total     $132,580  $205,091  $72,5"          54-7 

It  requires,  only  an  elementary  knowledge  of  busi- 
ness to  discern  the  fact  that  competition  under  such  con- 
ditions is  impossible.  And  beside  the  immediate  advan- 
tage of  cheaper  ships  and  lower  seamen's  wages  the  Brit- 
ish shipowner  had  other  most  effective  aids  in  his  struggle 
for  supremacy  upon  the  seas.  Some  of  these  are  natural 
and  can  never  be  overcome  by  aspiring  rivals.  Others 
are  artificial,  and  it  behooves  any  nation  seeking  an  hon- 
orable place  in  world-wide  commerce  to  study  these  and 
see  how  they  can  best  be  met. 

The  world-wide  distribution  of  British  coaling  sta- 
tions gives  that  country  a  decided  advantage  over  all 
rivals.  Not  only  have  discriminations  been  practiced 
against  other  than  British  ships  in  time  of  peace,  but 
during  the  war,  prior  to  the  entrance  upon  it  of  the 
United  States,  American  sea  captains  were  not  infre- 
quently forced  to  sign  agreements  against  trading  to 
certain  ports  suspected  of  aiding  the  enemy  before 
British  officials  would  furnish  them  with  coal.  This 
menace  to  a  truly  independent  American  merchant  marine 
must  be  met,  but  the  method  is  not  at  the  moment  evi- 
dent. We  have  but  few  colonies,  and  the  temper  of  our 
people  is  decidedly  against  materially  increasing  their 
number.  The  establishment  of  a  chain  of  coaling  sta- 
tions in  territory  owned  by  other  nations  offers  obvious 
perils  in  war  times,  while  to  create  them  before  we  have 
a  merchant  fleet  demanding  them  would  be  a  sort  of  fore- 


MERCHANT  MARINE  357 

sight  not  characteristic  of  Congress.  But  to  await  the 
creation  of  the  fleet  before  establishing  the  coaling  sta- 
tions would  be  a  little  like  the  case  of  the  tenant  of  the 
leaky  cabin  told  of  in  the  "Arkansaw  Traveler."  When 
it  wasn't  raining  there  was  no  use  fixing  the  roof ;  when 
it  rained  of  course  he  couldn't  do  it. 

A  second  obstacle  was  largely  removed  by  the  action 
of  the  United  States  during  the  war.  The  English  agency 
known  as  "Lloyds,"  which  establishes  the  rating  ships 
and  insures  them  has  always  been  a  distinctively  British 
organization,  not  scrupling  to  discriminate  in  favor  of 
the  home  fleet.  Accordingly  from  the  earliest  days 
American  ships  have  had  to  submit  to  discriminative  rul- 
ings in  order  to  secure  rating  and  insurance.  During 
the  war,  however,  the  United  States  Government  under- 
took the  insurance  of  its  own  vessels,  and  there  is  no 
doubt  that  the  continuance  of  this  system  will  make 
American  shipping  independent  of  Lloyds. 

But  if  we  overcome  by  Government  aid  or  in  any 
conceivable  way  the  disparity  between  the  initial  cost  of 
American  ships  and  those  built  abroad,  if  by  the  revision 
of  our  navigation  laws  and  the  establishment  of  subsidies 
we  reduce  the  cost  of  operating  an  American  ship  to 
approximately  that  of  a  British  or  Japanese  merchant- 
man; if  we  get  the  American  mind  turned  toward  the 
sea  so  that  our  capitalists  look  toward  it  as  a  place  of 
investment,  and  our  boys  as  a  place  for  a  career;  if  we 
establish  a  far-flung  system  of  coaling  stations,  and  free 
ourselves  from  the  domination  of  Lloyds,  there  still  re- 
mains one  vital  need  for  the  maintenance  of  a  great  mer- 
chant marine. 

Cargoes !  A  merchant  marine  without  loaded  bot- 
toms each  way  is  unthinkable.  And  at  this  point  the 
established  American  policy  of  protection  to  home  indus- 


358  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

tries  intervenes  to  make  more  difficult  the  work  of  keep- 
ing our  merchant  ships  prosperous.  Despite  such  mitiga- 
tion as  a  democratic  administration  has  effected  the 
national  policy  is  still  to  buy  as  little  abroad  as  possible ; 
to  manufacture  and  produce  all  we  need  for  home  con- 
sumption and  to  export  the  surplus.  Such  a  policy  hardly 
makes  for  the  symmetrical  and  profitable  development ^of 
an  ocean  merchant  marine. 

Beyond  question  the  enormous  predominance  of  Great 
Britain  on  the  seas  is  due  as  much  to  the  fiscal  policy  of 
the  nation  as  to  specific  acts  for  its  encouragement.  Eng- 
land is  at  once  a  great  manufacturing  country,  a  free- 
trade  country  and  a  country  forced  to  import  nearly  all 
of  the  food  needed  for  home  consumption.  It  is  the 
greatest  exporting  country  in  the  world,  and  the  ships 
that  go  out  heavy  laden  with  manufactured  goods,  and 
with  coal  with  which  Britain  supplies  a  great  part  of 
the  world,  bring  back  great  cargoes  of  foodstuffs  and  raw 
materials  for  the  English  people  and  the  English  fac- 
tories. 

Until  recently  the  United  States  has  had  no  occasion 
to  import  food,  and  with  proper  conservation  and  utiliza- 
tion of  our  national  resources  we  never  should  have. 
Our  fiscal  policy  has  endeavored  to  build  up  our  manu- 
facturing industries  by  shutting  out  the  products  of 
foreign  factories.  Accordingly  during  the  half  century 
which  witnessed  the  decline  of  the  United  States  mer- 
chant marine  maritime  commerce  with  our  nation  was  a 
somewhat  jug-handled  affair.  Ships,  usually  under  for- 
eign flags  for  we  had  ceased  to  have  any  of  our  own, 
came  to  our  ports  seeking  cargoes  of  food  or  raw  mate- 
rials. They  brought  in  little  to  us.  Indeed,  foreign 
shipping  firms  had  come  to  rely  so  little  on  income  from 
their  western  voyages  that  many  ships  came  across  in 


MERCHANT  MARINE  359 

ballast  or  took  such  freight  as  would  find  a  market  in 
the  United  States  for  the  mere  cost  of  loading  angl  dis- 
charging it.  But  one  way  business  is  a  poor  support  for 
a  great  mercantile  fleet.  England  by  natural  conditions 
which  make  her  a  great  importer  of  foodstuffs  and  ex- 
porter of  coal  and  manufactured  goods  held  the  ideal 
position  for  a  maritime  nation,  and  buttressed  that  posi- 
tion by  a  free-trade  policy,  and  liberal  subsidies.  Ger- 
many forty  years  ago  was  in  much  th§  position  of  the 
United  States  to-day.  But  she  built  up  her  enormous 
merchant  fleet  by  liberal,  almost  extravagant,  Govern- 
ment aid,  and  developed  an  export  trade  to  supply  her 
ships  with  outgoing  cargoes  by  an  elaborate  and  far- 
reaching  system  of  Government  assistance.  The  Ger- 
man  manufacturer  was  taught  that  it  was  worth  while 
to  sell  his  goods  abroad  for  a  smaller  profit  than  at  home. 
When  this  lesson  was  heeded  the  Government  found  him 
the  markets  and  the  ships  to  reach  them.  The  result  was 
the  second  merchant  fleet  on  the  ocean,  and  the  develop- 
ment of  German  export  trade  to  an  extent  that  made 
England  nervous.  The  war  has  changed  all  that,  and  if 
we  are  wise  enough  to  give  some  heed  to  the  lessons 
Germany  taught,  we  may  win  the  place  in  the  commerce 
of  nations  which  she  threw  away  in  the  mad  race  for 
military  conquest. 

Primarily  the  nation  must  itself  be  convinced  of  the 
profit  to  be  derived  from  the  extension  of  international 
trade,  and  the  upbuilding  of  our  merchant  marine.  When 
there  were  greater  things  to  be  done  ashore,  the  active 
and  adventurous  spirits  of  the  American  people  turned 
away  from  the  ocean.  If  now,  as  seems  to  be  the  case, 
the  internal  development  of  our  country  has  reached  a 
stage  which  will  enable  our  captains  of  industry  to  look 
abroad  for  profitable  fields,  we  may  expect  that  the 


360 


THE   STORY    OF   OUR 


limitations  which  now  seem  to  hedge  in  our  merchant 
marine  will  be  broken  down  and  the  United  States  will 
resume  its  rightful  place  on  the  oceans. 

Comes  at  last  the  final  question,  "Suppose  we  have 
our  ships  built,  with  every  fair  prospect  of  international 
trade  in  volume  sufficient  to  keep  them  busy;  how  shall 
we  find  sailors  to  man  them,  and  officers  fit  to  command  ?" 

This  is  no  easy  problem.  It  may  be  said  at  the  out- 
set that  we  want  no  American  merchant  marine  the  sea- 


LAUNCHING  A  LIFEBOAT  THROUGH  THE  SURF 


men  of  which  are  underpaid,  underfed  and  forced  to  live  • 
under  Asiatic  conditions.  It  is  quite  true,  and  it  would ; 
be  folly  to  evade  or  conceal  the  fact,  that  in  the  palmiest  ] 
days  of  our  merchant  marine,  the  period  of  the  clipper: 
ships  to  which  we  point  with  pride,  the  men  in  the  fore-] 
castle  were  treated  like  slaves  and  fed  like  dogs.  A  high ; 
type  of  public  conscience  precludes  any  thought  of  ai 
return  to  this  condition.  We  are  neither  going  to  man| 


MERCHANT  MARINE  361 

our  ships  with  Lascars  nor  with  Coolies,  nor  shall  we 
force  our  seamen  to  live  as  these  Asiatic  types  are  willing 
to  live.  The  La  Follette  seamen's  law  has  for  its  excuse 
the  effort  to  guard  against  this,  and  while  there  is  much 
in  it  that  must  be  corrected  in  the  light  of  practical  ex- 
perience, there  is  no  doubt  that  its  fundamental  princi- 
ples,— American  seamen  for  American  ships,  and  Amer- 
ican wages  for  American  seamen, — 'will  prevail  in  all  leg- 
islation affecting  our  merchant  marine. 

Meantime  the  government  is  making  every  effort  to 
induce  young  Americans  to  enter  the  merchant  marine 
as  a  life's  profession. 

The  Recruiting  Service  of  the  United  States  Ship- 
ping Board,  with  its  headquarters  at  Boston,  is  endeavor- 
ing to  interest  American  boys  in  the  sailor's  career,  and 
with  a  generous  measure  of  success.  The  Director  of 
Operations  for  the  Shipping  Board  sets  forth  the  purpose 
thus: 

We  want  to  attract  to  the  sea  the  kind  of  American  boys 
that  older  men  among  us  remember  in  their  own  school  days — 
nice,  clean  boys,  who  had  good  homes,  and  left  them  amid  the 
old  family  discussion  as  to  whether  they  should  be  bankers, 
insurance  men,  retail  merchants,  or  what  not.  To-day,  we  want 
to  add  to  this  list  of  careers  for  our  American  boys  that  of  the 
pursuit  of  the  sea.  We  want  to  attract  to  it,  among  others, 
boys  who  come  from  college,  and  who  know  how  to  swim  and 
play  football.  We  want  to  make  conditions  in  sea-going  such 
that  they  will  feel  it  is  the  best  destiny  they  can  find. 

We  want  to  get  good  men  and  train  them  to  be  good  sea- 
men and  then  good  officers — or  good  foreign  representatives  in 
commercial  or  industrial  lines,  and  agents  on  the  staffs  of  steam- 
ship companies,  at  home  or  in  foreign  ports. 

A  young  American  selecting  a  career  naturally  asks 
what  are  the  rewards  open  to  faithful  and  efficient 
service  in  that  career.  Setting  aside  for  the  moment  the 
possibilities  of  graduating  from  actual  sea  service  to  the 


362  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

shore  management  of  lines,  or  a  position  as  commercial 
agent  in  some  foreign  country  we  find  the  wage  scale 
for  officers  adopted  by  the  Shipping  Board  to-day  as  fol- 
lows: 

RATING  PAY  PER  MONTH 

Captain $230  to    v$3oo 

ist  Mate  140  to      165 

2d  Mate 125  to      150 

3d  Mate 1 10  to      135 

*4th  Mate 115  and    120 


Chief  Engineer   $160  to    $230 

ist  Asst.  Engineer 140  to      165 

2d  Asst.  Engineer 125  to      150 

3d  Asst.   Engineer    1 10  to      135. 

*4th  Asst.  Engineer   115  and    120 

Graduates  of  United  States  Shipping  Board  schools 
serving  as  Junior  or  Sub- Junior  officers  receive  $90  a 
month,  with  no  bonus. 

There  is  no  reason  to  anticipate  any  reduction  in  this 
scale  of  wages.  Indeed  with  the  increase  in  the  size  of 
our  merchant  fleet  the  need  for  more  officers  may  well 
result  in  the  increase  of  the  wage  schedule.  Bear  in 
mind  that  all  living  expenses  are  met  while  at  sea.  If 
American  boys  will  inquire  among  their  friends  as  to 
how  many  may  be  sure  of  from  $125  to  $250  a  month 
above  board  and  lodging  they  will  find  that  the  rewards 
of  sea  service  are  not  below  those  of  shore-keeping  oc- 
cupations. 

Let  us  consider  now  how  a  boy,  let  us  say  from  the 
Kansas  prairies  with  no  maritime  experience,  may  put  his 
foot  on  the  sea  ladder  that  leads  to  the  quarter  deck. 

*  Carried    only   on   the   largest   ships. 


THE    EXCITING    MOMENT    IN    THE    PILOT'S   TRADE. 


MERCHANT   MARINE  363 

He  must  to  begin  with  be  18  years  of  age,  an  Ameri- 
can citizen  and  physically  fit.  After  making  a  formal 
application  at  an  enrolling  station  upon  blanks  to  be  ob- 
tained by  writing  to  the  Recruiting  Service  Custom 
House,  Boston,  he  awaits  his  call  to  service.  Within 
about  a  week  he  will  be  summoned  for  physical  examina- 
tion and,  when  accepted,  will  be  sent  to  the  nearest  train- 
ing ship,  paying  his  own  railroad  fare  but  being  reim- 
bursed on  enrollment.  These  ships  are  scattered  about 
the  ports  of  the  United  States  on  both  oceans,  the 
largest  being  the  "Meade,"  once  the  ocean  greyhound 
"City  of  Berlin,"  at  Boston.  The  "Iris"  that  was  with 
Dewey  at  Manila  is  at  San  Francisco.  Arrived  at  his 
destination  the  recruit  is  at  once  put  on  the  payroll  for 
$30  a  month,  and  furnished  with  a  uniform  and  equip- 
ment the  cost  of  which  will  be  charged  to  him.  He 
then  becomes  a  naval  apprentice,  and,  if  he  has  already 
had  some  experience  at  sea  will  be  sent  out  at  once  on 
his  training  ship  for  a  practice  voyage.  Otherwise  he  is 
given  shore  training  for  a  time.  The  whole  course  on  a 
training  ship  occupies  one  or  two  months  according  to 
the  capacity  and  industry  of  the  apprentice.  When  it  is 
completed  he  is  given  a  berth  on  a  regular  merchant 
ship. 

Boys  of  an  earlier  generation  than  this  used  to  read 
with  delight,  "Oliver  Optic's"  books  of  the  "Young 
America"  series  in  which  fortunate  youths  of  wealthy 
families  were  enrolled  in  a  school  on  a  sailing  ship 
which  carried  them  about  the  world,  while  at  the  same 
time  their  ordinary  studies  were  prosecuted  under  capa- 
ble masters.  To-day  Uncle  Sam  offers  almost  the  same 
education,  throwing  it  open  to  the  poorest,  and  even 
paying  boys  while  their  education  is  in  progress.  The 
ships  on  which  they  are  trained  are  modern,  well, 


364  THE   STORY   OF    OUR 

equipped  steamers,  withdrawn  for  this  purpose  from  ac- 
tive mercantile  service.  They  are  steamheated,  gener- 
ously equipped  with  baths,  and  with  many  facilities  for 
exercise  and  recreation.  The  discipline  is  that  of  the 
United  States  navy,  not  unkindly  but  advantageous  in 
the  development  of  character.  Boys  are  kept  on  the 
training  ships  not  a  day  longer  than  is  necessary.  From 
one  of  the  official  publications  the  following  account  of 
the  work,  and  the  apprentice's  prospects  is  taken : 

"Particular  attention  is  paid  to  the  routine  of  life  on 
shipboard,  to  boat  drill  and  to  fire  drill.  The  apprentices 
who  are  to  become  sailors  are  drilled  also  in  seaman- 
ship, lookout,  knowledge  of  the  compass  and  the  han- 
dling and  splicing  of  ropes.  Firemen  are  drilled  under 
trained  men  in  the  work  of  handling  fuel  and  making 
steam.  Cooks  and  messmen  are  given  actual  instruction 
in  galley  and  messroom  under  experienced  instructors. 
Each  instructor,  so  far  as  practicable,  is  in  charge  of 
only  10  men,  which  insures  individual  attention  to  each 
of  the  apprentices  in  his  charge.  . 

"The  inexperienced  man  trained  by  the  course  of  in- 
struction thus  provided  becomes  qualified  in  the  shortest 
possible  time  to  serve  his  country  in  its  merchant  fleets. 

"When  he  has  finished  his  training  as  an  apprentice 
he  takes  his  place  in  actual  work  at  sea  beside  experi- 
enced men  who  -will  respect  his  legal  status  among  them. 
Not  only  the  sailors,  but  the  firemen,  coal-passers,  cooks 
and  messmen  that  come  off  the  training  ships  start  in 
their  tasks  at  sea  with  the  knowledge  that  they  are  wanted 
and  welcome  on  the  new  vessels  of  the  merchant  marine. 

"A  graduate  from  a  United  States  Shipping  Board 
Recruiting  Service  training  ship  who  has  had  some 
actual  experience  about  the  water — especially  if  it  has 
been  yachting  experience — -usually  may  qualify  as  a 


MERCHANT  MARINE  365 

boatswain  or  quartermaster  after  a  few  months  in  actual 
service. 

"The  young  American  merchant  sailor  knows  that 
after  a  total  of  two  years'  sea  experience  he  may  enter  a 
United  States  Shipping  Board  school  in  navigation  to 
fit  himself  for  an  officer's  license;  that  in  three  years  he 
can  pass  through  all  three  grades  as  mate — 3d,  2d  and  ist 
in  order — and  that  his  next  step  in  promotion  is  to  the 
command  of  a  ship.  An  apprentice  who  chooses  the 
engine  room  branch  of  the  service  may  advance  from 
fireman  to  oiler  or  water-tender,  and  after  two  years' 
service  become  eligible  for  a  license  as  third  assistant 
engineer — a  step  in  promotion  toward  the  position  of 
chief  engineer." 

The  positions  for  which  the  men  who  have  undergone 
this  training  are  fitted,  with  the  wages  attached  to  them 
are  shown  in  the  following  table,  the  rating  for  which 
apprentices  are  trained  being  shown  in  black  type: 

DECK   DEPARTMENT 

PAY  PFR 
RATING  IN  SERVICE  MONTH 

Carpenter $90.00 

Carpenter's  Mate 85.00 

Boatswain 85.00 

Boatswain's  Mate 80.00 

Quartermaster 77-S° 

Able  Seaman 75-OO 

Ordinary  Seaman 55-oo 

Deck  Boy 40.00 

ENGINE  ROOM 

*Oiler $80.00 

*Water-tender   80.00 

Engine  Room  Storekeeper 80.00 


366  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

Fireman 75-oo 

Coal-passer  65.00 

Wiper  (on  oil  burners) 65.00 

STEWARD'S  DEPARTMENT 

Chief  Steward $100.00  to  $145.00 

Chief  Cook 100.00  to  120.00 

Baker 95.00  to  105.00 

Second  Cook 9o.oo 

Second  Steward 85.00 

Butcher   85.00 

Second  Baker 75-oo 

Storekeeper    75-OO 

Pantryman    65.00 

Vegetable  Cook   65.00 

Third  Cook   60.00 

Messrnan 60.00 

Scullion   60.00 

Messboy    55-OO 

But  positions  of  this  sort,  though  honorable  and  not 
unprofitable,  do  not  measure  up  to  the  ambitions  of  the 
true  American  boy.  He  wants  to  get  to  the  top — to  be 
in  command.  In  the  old  days  the  smart,  active  sailor 
studied  a  little  navigation  aboard,  learned  to  make  a 
reckoning  by  rule  of  thumb,  attracted  his  captain's  at- 
tention by  alertness  and  intelligence  and  got  to  be  second 
mate. 

Nowadays  sea-faring  has  become  more  of  a  profes- 
sion— indeed,  a  good  many  of  the  luminaries  of  the 
"learned  professions"  ashore  have  had  less  exacting 
elementary  training  than  is  demanded  of  the  would-be- 
captain  or  chief  engineer  to-day. 

The  first  step  toward  securing  a  station  in  the  mer- 


*Special   training  at   Chicago  for  these   ratings. 


MERCHANT   MARINE  367 

chant  marine  equivalent  to  a  commission  in  the  navy  is 
attendance  upon  one  of  the  Shipping  Board's  Free  Train- 
ing Schools  for  Merchant  Marine  Officers.  The  mere 
admission  to  these  schools  requires  some  special  quali- 
fications. The  schools  are  not  for  landsmen.  Whether 
the  applicant  desires  to  fit  for  a  deck  officer  or  an  engi- 
neer he  must  have  had  at  least  two  years  sea  service. 
Moreover,  he  must  be  an  American  citizen  under  56 
years  of  age  and  in  good  health.  The  course  is  but  brief 
— from  four  to  six  weeks,  and  is  designed  mainly  to  add 
a  scientific  and  technical  knowledge  to  the  practical 
training  derived  from  years  of  arduous  sea  service. 

We  find,  therefore,  that  the  rush  of  preparation  for 
a  prolonged  arid  desperate  war — which  on  our  part 
proved  to  be  but  brief — has  resulted  in  providing  the 
United  States  with  a  magnificent  merchant  fleet,  the 
nucleus  of  a  necessary  body  of  American  sailors,  and 
the  facilities  for  educating  both  officers  and  seamen  in 
the  numbers  that  will  be  necessary  for  manning  the  fleet. 

There  are  already  indications  that  young  America  is 
responding  to  the  call  of  the  sea.  It  is  estimated  that 
since  the  beginning  of  the  war  not  less  than  250,000  men 
have  been  furnished  to  the  merchant  marine  by  the 
branch  of  the  navy  that  undertook  this  service.  These 
men  are  now  in  the  United  States  naval  reserve,  and 
their  period  of  enforced  service  will  end  with  the  pass- 
ing of  the  war-time  emergency.  But  many  have  felt 
the  charm  of  the  sea,  and  would  continue  in  it  if  they 
could  receive  wages  commensurate  with  those  they  could 
earn  on  land.  It  has  been  suggested  that  the  Govern- 
ment might  meet  this  situation  by  enrolling  all  American 
sailors  in  the  Naval  Reserve.  The  shipowners  would  in 
such  event  pay  the  seamen  the  rate  of  wages  fixed  by 
competition  with  British  ships,  while  the  Government 


368  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

would  pay  the  difference  between  that  and  an  American 
standard  of  wages.  Objection  will  be  made  to  this  that 
it  is  using  public  funds  to  advance  a  private  interest. 
But  there  is  in  the  first  place  the  answer  that  such  pay- 
ments are  made  to  maintain  and  to  keep  at  command  a 
body  of  trained  seamen  ready  to  serve  the  nation  in  time 
of  war.  With  such  a  body  of  men  subject  to  call  already 
serving  on  American  ships  the  navy  would  be  supplied 
with  all  its  needed  auxiliary  ships  and  all  needed  seamen 
in  a  few  hours  after  the  declaration  of  war.  It  is  doubt- 
ful whether  the  gross  expense  of  such  a  system  for  the 
next  quarter  of  a  century  would  exceed  the  cost  to  which 
the  country  was  put  in  1917  in  hastily  extemporizing  an 
auxiliary  fleet  and  in  recruiting  the  men  to  man  it.  While, 
if  it  had  not  been  for  the  British  fleet  which  stood  be- 
tween us  and  disaster,  the  price  of  our  naval  unprepared- 
ness  in  that  war  might  have  been  more  than  enough  to 
have  supported  such  a  paid  naval  reserve  for  centuries 
to  come. 

But  it  is  a  question  whether  a  great  merchant  marine 
should  be  looked  upon  as  purely  a  private  enterprise  and 
as  such  debarred  from  receiving  aid  from  the  public 
treasury.  To  begin  with  it  carries  the  mails,  and  for 
that  service  is  entitled  to  payments  from  the  treasury 
which  cannot  justly  be  called  subsidies  any  more  than 
similar  payments  to  the  railroads  are  subsidies.  More- 
over, it  extends  the  trade  of  the  United  States  and  opens 
far-off  sections  of  the  world  to  our  merchants.  To  some 
extent  this  service  is  analagous  to  that  performed  by  our 
Pacific  railroads  in  their  earlier  days,  for  which  they 
received  huge  grants  of  public  land  from  the  national 
government,  and  considerable  subventions  from  the 
States  which  they  traversed. 

More  and  more  the  United  States  is  becoming  a  great 


MERCHANT  MARINE  369 

manufacturing  nation.  About  twenty  years  ago  a  famous 
railroad  builder,  the  late  James  J.  Hill,  was  ridiculed 
when  he  said  that  the  time  was  in  sight  when  the  United 
States  would  have  to  import  food  for  its  people,  but  his 
prophesy  came  true  and  speedily.  But  while  it  is  not 
probable  that  we  shall  ever  be  dependent  upon  foreign 
lands  for  food,  it  is  evident  that  we  must  turn  to  them 
for  markets  for  our  products.  No  progressive  nation 
can  ever  be  wholly  self-sufficient.  It  must  carry  its  trade 
and  its  influence  into  foreign  parts,  and  only  through  an 
adequate  merchant  marine  can  this  be  accomplished. 

The  United  States  to-day  faces  a  critical  moment  in 
its  history.  It  has  afloat  or  approaching  completion  at 
least  20,000,000  tons  of  deep-sea  shipping.  It  has  already 
enrolled  in  its  Naval  Reserve  a  great  body  of  able  seamen 
fit  to  man  these  ships.  It  has  provided  the  educational 
machinery  for  turning  these  sailors  into  officers.  It  has 
an  industrial  community  equipped  for  turning  out  goods 
of  every  sort  for  the  markets  of  every  country. 

In  brief  we  have  what  might  be  described  as  the 
"plant"  for  the  creation  of  a  great  and  prosperous  mer- 
chant marine.  What  are  we  going  to  do  with  it  ?  Scrap 
it?  Or  use  it  to  the  fullest  extent  in  the  maintenance 
of  American  power  on  the  high  seas? 

What  shall  we  do  with  the  ships  built  or  building? 
Their  initial  cost  has  been  at  least  twice  that  of  their 
competitors  under  foreign  flags.  It  is  easy  enough,  and 
proper  enough,  for  the  Government  to  charge  off  this 
excess  to  the  account  of  war  expenditures.  But  what 
then?  The  ships  belong  to  the  Government  and  are 
controlled  by  the  Emergency  Shipping  Corporation,  the 
existence  of  which  terminates  five  years  after  the  con- 
clusion of  the  war.  It  is  urged  that  the  Government 
should  retain  title  to  the  ships  and  lease  them  to  operating 


370  THE   STORY    OF    OUR 

companies  at  so  moderate  a  figure  that  these  companies 
would  well  be  able  to  purchase  them  at  the  expiration 
of  the  five  years'  period.  Others  hold  that  the  Govern- 
ment should  sell  the  ships  outright,  at  prices  to  be  fixed 
in  the  open  international  market.  The  immediate  objec- 
tion to  this  is  the  danger  that  the  ships  might  at  once 
be  sold  to  foreign  buyers  or  transferred  to  a  foreign  flag 
in  order  to  gain  the  advantages  of  cheaper  operation. 
There  are  those  who  contend  that  the  laws  governing 
the  operation  of  American  ships  are  so  burdensome  that 
a  man  could  not  accept  a  ship  as  a  gift  and  operate  it  at 
a  profit. 

Indeed,  it  is  probable  that  a  condition  precedent  to 
any  disposition  of  our  ships  must  be  the  radical  amend- 
ment of  our  navigation  laws  and  the  establishment  of  a 
fixed  and  continuous  policy  of  encouragement  to  our 
shipping.  What  form  this  encouragement  should  take 
may  well  puzzle  the  most  earnest  advocates  of  a  revived 
American  merchant  marine.  The  most  commonly  advo- 
cated system  is  one  of  subsidy,  and  it  seems  in  the  main 
to  have  been  effective  with  both  British  and  German 
shipping.  Yet  after  all  to  subsidize  our  ships  merely 
stimulates  foreign  nations  to  subsidize  their  ships  more 
heavily.  The  story  has  already  been  told  in  this  book 
of  the  establishment  of  the  Collins  Line  by  aid  of  a  sub- 
sidy, but  it  was  driven  out  of  existence  mainly  by  larger 
subsidies  granted  by  Great  Britain  to  the  Cunard  Line. 
Moreover,  when  the  Collins  Line  was  subsidized  it 
quickly  drove  out  of  the  field  other  American  lines  which 
did  not  enjoy  a  subsidy.  This  effect  of  subsidizing  a 
single  corporation  has  been  made  very  evident  in  the 
history  of  both  British  and  German  shipping. 

The  United  States  tried  the  subsidy  plan  in  1891  when 
it  was  masked  under  pretext  of  simply  paying  for  the 


MERCHANT   MARINE  371 

carriage  of  the  mails.  It  offered  four  dollars  a  mile  for 
the  outward  carriage  of  mails  on  ships  of  8,000  tons  with 
a  speed  of  not  less  than  twenty  knots.  As  a  result  of  the 
awarding  of  this  subsidy  the  American  line  built  two 
ships  of  excellent  quality  for  that  time,  the  "St.  Paul" 
and  the  "St.  Louis"  and  was  permitted  to  transfer  to  the 
American  flag  two  other  ships  of  foreign  construction. 
That  is  all  that  was  accomplished  by  this  particular  essay 
in  the  encouragement  of  the  transatlantic  merchant  ma- 
rine. No  other  ships  were  built.  When  the  war  opened 
the  "St.  Paul"  and  "St.  Louis,"  then  more  than  twenty 
years  old,  had  been  degraded  to  mere  second-class  ships 
in  the  passenger  trade.  They  still  enjoyed  the  mail  con- 
tract, however,  and  naturally  as  long  as  the  company 
operating  them  had  that  advantage  no  new  company 
could  successfully  compete  with  them.  By  the  same  law 
smaller  ships  of  lesser  speed  designed  for  traffic  with 
South  America  were  also  awarded  mail  contracts.  But 
exactly  as  in  the  transatlantic  field  so  in  the  necessary 
lines  of  communication  with  Central  and  South  America 
the  subsidy  plan  proved  unavailing  to  build  up  an  ade- 
quate fleet. 

The  advocates  of  subsidy  claim  that  the  remedy  for 
these  failures  would  be  more  subsidies.  In  brief  they 
charge  the  nation  with  having  been  too  niggardly  to 
achieve  the  object  it  desired.  That  is  yet  to  be  proved 
and  it  is  possible  that  the  new  mail  compensation  law  of 
1917  may  help  to  demonstrate  it.  Under  that  law  the 
post  office  department  may  make  contracts  for  the  car- 
riage of  the  mails  at  $8.00  per  ton  for  outgoing  voyages, 
the  ships  to  be  not  less  than  35,000  tons  and  of  a  speed 
not  less  than  thirty  miles  an  hour.  As  the  United  States 
has  at  present  no  ships  meeting  these  requirements,  with 
the  exception  of  "Leviathan,"  which  was  taken  over  from 


372  THE   STORY   OF   OUR 

the  Germans,  this  law  has  not  yet  been  put  to  the  test. 
Nor  in  1909  was  there  any  word  that  any  American  ship- 
builders were  planning  the  construction  of  vessels  for 
the  purpose  of  enabling  them  to  take  advantage  of  this 
offer. 

It  is  probable  that  the  next  few  years  will  witness  a 
very  heated  debate  on  the  question  as  to  how  an  Ameri- 
can merchant  marine  may  be  maintained.  Because  of 
the  artificial  conditions  created  by  a  great  war  we  are 
in  possession  of  an  enormous  fleet  with  which  to  experi- 
ment so  that  for  the  moment  the  question  of  the  initial 
cost  of  the  ships  is  not  of  vital  importance.  But  how  to 
operate  those  ships  with  labor  maintained  on  the  Ameri- 
can scale  and  in  competition  with  the  Asiatic  labor  em- 
ployed in  every  other  merchant  marine  is  the  first  and 
vital  problem.  That  there  can  be  an  equalization  by 
treaty  of  sailor's  wages  in  all  seafaring  nations  seems 
impracticable,  though  that  remedy  is  widely  discussed. 
Prominent  figures  in  the  building  of  our  present  mer- 
chant fleet  declare  that  new  devices  for  oil-burning  and 
combustion  engines  are  going  to  do  away  with  much 
costly  labor  on  shipboard,  but  even  if  so  these  improve- 
ments would  speedily  be  adopted  in  foreign  ships  and  the 
place  of  the  United  States  in  competition  with  them 
would  remain  unchanged. 

Unless  these  apparent  obstacles  to  the  re-establish- 
ment of  the  merchant  marine  can  be  met,  there  is  reason 
to  fear  that  the  great  fleet  we  are  now  completing  may 
pass  into  foreign  hands.  But  if,  as  seems  probable,  the 
American  people  have  become,  in  Mr.  Hurley's  phrase, 
ship-minded,  if  the  attention  of  energetic  and  adven- 
turous spirits  is  being  turned  from  internal  develop- 
ment to  foreign  commercial  enterprise,  and  if  the  nation 
as  a  whole  is  thoroughly  awake  to  the  vital  necessity  of 


MERCHANT  MARINE  373 

having  its  own  methods  of  intercommunication  with  for- 
eign lands  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  in  some 
way  the  obstacles  will  be  overcome  and  that  the  nation 
may  regain  before  the  end  of  its  second  century  of 
existence  the  proud  position  afloat  which  it  had  when  it 
was  scarce  half  a  century  old. 


END 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 

AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  SO  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $1.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


APR    141936 





THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


